


Tearing Down the Toy City

by roebling, rubblerousing



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Canon, Best Friends, Gambling, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-12
Updated: 2008-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 52,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roebling/pseuds/roebling, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubblerousing/pseuds/rubblerousing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What I'm trying to say, Spence, is that if you don't like the way things are going, that's fine, but if you're nostalgic for five years ago, you better give up. 2001 is not coming back. You and Ryan were never going to be fourteen forever. I think you need to figure out what you want."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with the wonderful, amazing rubblerousing AKA my very best friend back in '08. Panic 2.0 AU.

Spencer was tired but he'd already learned never to admit it. He wasn’t really drunk – or he didn’t think he was drunk, but he wasn't sure. It was quiet. He didn't know where anyone was. There were girls earlier, but they’d gone. Spencer didn’t know where. He still made kind of a fool of himself when he talked to girls. It was easier than he would have thought to forget that he was almost a rock star. Everything was essentially the same. This whole scene was eerily familiar, not very different all from those Saturday night parties in someone’s parents’ basement back in Vegas.

"Dude, you there?" Jeff asked. His wide mouth and small eyes and nervous way of holding his hands near his body made Spencer think of a squirrel. Brent had introduced them sometime earlier in the night.

"Sure," he said. "Yeah. Yes." The dice slid sweaty in his palm. He took a sip of his beer. There were twenty bucks on the line. Spencer kissed the back of his hand; this was an affection of Jeff’s, a charm for a good roll. He closed his eyes and flung the dice against the wall. They bounced and settled. Two threes and a two.

"Fuck," Spencer muttered under his breath.

"Point," Jeff said. He cackled, gathered up the cash. "That’s rough, man."

They had been playing for an hour. Spencer had won only two games. He didn’t know how much money he’d lost. Things were getting away from him. The bus was parked no more than a hundred yards away. Spencer could be in his bunk and asleep inside of fifteen minutes. Jeff slipped the money in his wallet. It bulged. He’d played poker against some of the tech guys for Academy earlier. They were novices. He’d fleeced them. This wasn’t like that. Spencer was due a streak of good luck.

"I’ll go again," Spencer said. He slapped a twenty on the table.

Jeff smirked. "Alright, man," he said. "Your roll."

Spencer grabbed the dice, and let them fly.

\----

The first time Spencer ever set foot inside a casino, he was ten years old. His father worked in purchasing at the Tropicana, and he took Spencer to one of those company sponsored ‘Take Your Child to Work’ days. A man in a dark suit led the little group of a dozen parents and their kids through the kitchen of a three star restaurant, where a smiling chef in a puffy white hat gave each kid a cookie frosted to look like a poker chip. He showed them a room full of televisions where you could monitor nearly any part of the casino. He took them into a huge dark theater and let them go on the stage. A dark haired little boy giggled and whispered to Spencer that they had shows with naked ladies on that stage. At ten, Spencer had an idea he was supposed to think that was cool or funny or something, but he just shrugged.

At the end of the tour, the man in the suit told them all he was going to do something he wasn’t supposed to and it had to be a secret. He winked. The kids giggled. He led them through a pair of tall double doors into a vast dark room. A few slot machines sparkled but most were silent. A few purple haired old ladies fed them nickels. It was eleven in the morning. The men slumped around the blackjack tables looked unwashed and bleary.

Later, in the car, Spencer’s dad asked him, "How did you like all that?"

Spencer shrugged. "It was okay," he said. "It wasn’t as boring as I thought."

His dad laughed. "I do manage to drag myself out of bed in the morning, you know."

"Yeah," Spencer said. "But it wasn’t like on TV either. I thought there'd be men in tuxedos and ladies in sparkling gowns."

"Nothing's as glamorous as it seems," his dad said. "The only thing you can do in a casino is throw away your money. That’s all they’re good for."

\-----

Photo shoots kind of sucked. Ryan liked to talk to the photographer about the concept and Brent liked the free stuff they got, and Brendon liked anything that put him in the spotlight, but Spencer hated them. He had worn basically the same uniform of jeans and tee shirts for years. He didn’t want to dress up like a member of a marching band, or a Victorian gentleman, or anything like that. He didn’t want anyone to take his picture. He didn’t think anyone really wanted to take his picture.

He was first out of makeup. Ryan stared down the mirror while a petite, bored girl painted an intricate design on his cheek. He was enraptured. Brent had been a half an hour late. Brendon enthused about his love for cosmetology to the hair stylist. Spencer took his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through his contacts. The only friends he was close enough with to call he saw every day. He lingered over the entry for his parents’ house. He could call them. He knew he could always call them, but he’d already spoken to his mother earlier and if he called too often they got worried and started to ask him if he was sure he’d made the right choice.

His hair was stiff with spray. It was long now and looked kind of like his mom’s when she was going out with their dad and got too done up. He and his sisters laughed and called her 'helmet head' behind her back. Now, he felt foolish and bored. All he’d wanted to do was play the drums and help Ryan. That was a lie, but nothing was working out like he’d imagined it.

Brendon sat down beside him.

"Hey Spence," he said. "Hey."

"Brendon," Spencer said. "Hi."

"Where did you go last night?" Brendon asked. "I was looking for someone to watch Robin Hood with me."

Brendon always sat too close. Spencer shifted away. "I was just at the party," he said.

"Man, why did you stick around? That was like the worst time ever," Brendon said. Brendon had a design painted onto his face, too.

Spencer shrugged. "I don’t know," he said.

"We went back to Will’s bus with those girls," Brendon said, smiling. "You should have come."

Spencer stuffed his phone back in his pocket. "They were kind of gross," he said. "The blonde had a tattoo of a pineapple on her crotch." Her pants had been so low cut the entire party had seen.

Brendon laughed. "That’s the whole point, Spencer."

Spencer rolled his eyes.

Brendon clapped him on the shoulder. "Dude, when you’re famous, you don’t need to have standards," he said.

Spencer suspected he was parroting something he’d heard Pete or someone say. Before he started hanging out with Spencer and Brent and Ryan, Brendon had been scared to drink caffeinated soda.

Brendon waved his arm. "You need some rock star lessons, Mr. Smith," he said.

Spencer looked scornful.

"For real," Brendon said. "Next time there’s chicks around after a show I’m picking one out for you. If you go up and act like your naturally charming self I bet you totally end up hooking up."

"Yeah, right," Spencer said.

"Seriously," Brendon said. "It’s like magic. You don’t even need any luck."

\----

As a child, Spencer’s year was marked by certain expected interruptions of his schedule – Christmas in December, Easter in the spring, his family’s big Fourth of July barbecue, his birthday, etc.. When he was really young, he helped his mother count down to these landmark events on the big dry erase board in the kitchen. Probably around forth grade, Spencer realized these days he looked forward to for so long only formed a horrible pattern of their own. He knew, without even asking, that his family would go on a skiing trip in February. He knew they’d visit his mom’s relatives in the summer. The next seven or eight years of his life stretched out before him in a long uninterrupted skein of routine.

Ryan’s life was the exact opposite. Weird things happened to Ryan all the time. His mom left, and then his mom came back. Snakes infested his back yard one summer, and lightening struck his bicycle once when he left it out in the driveway in a storm. Sometimes his dad drank. Sometimes his dad had three new jobs in two months. Sometimes Ryan was a normal kid, and sometimes his life was insane. He was like one of those pitiable orphans in television movies who were the target for all the worst and least likely domestic catastrophes.

The year things were worst for Ryan he slept in the trundle bed in Spencer’s room for three months. He went home only when the same rotation of five tee shirts started to feel too much like a uniform. Spencer’s mom drove him over to his house and sat parked out front with the car idling while Ryan went around back and let himself in through the kitchen. Once, Ryan found his dad passed out at the kitchen table, his skin pale and vomit sliding down the front of his shirt.

Somehow, the guidance department at school found out what was going on and called Ryan and Ryan’s dad and Ryan’s teachers and Spencer’s mom and dad in for a big meeting. During third period an announcement came over the loud speaker for Ryan to report to the principal's office. Third period was chemistry. It was the only class Ryan and Spencer had together, because Spencer was a year ahead in science. Their teacher was shrewish Mrs. Burrel, but she had no choice but to let Ryan go. All the other students whispered as he slipped from his seat and out the door. Later, a few girls came up to Spencer and asked him if he knew what was going on. Spencer explained calmly that he knew but he wasn't allowed to say. The girls feigned shock.

Spencer relished the attention.

\----

"Holy... fucking shit."

Spencer was pretty sure he was asleep. They had only been at the hotel for thirty minutes at the very most, but taking short-lived, between dreaming and waking naps were all he had survived on for the entire tour. They checked in, Brendon called dibs on Spencer with an obnoxious, mischievous wink, and then his head hit the pillow and he was out.

"Holy fucking shit!" Brendon was yelling, sounding muffled this time like perhaps the walls had eaten him alive as a favor to Spencer for yelling while he was trying to relax. He opened his eyes and glared at the alarm clock. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon. The day had already been too long.

"Look at this!" Brendon yelled, grabbed Spencer by the hand, and pulled him out of bed. "Look at what this hotel can do!"

"I wasn't sleeping, or anything," Spencer told him, viciously rubbing his eyes.

"Look," Brendon said seriously, dragging him to a door that led to what Spencer assumed was a closet but had no desire to ever prove or disprove. Their band was not a family on a week-long vacation full of sightseeing and adventure. They wouldn't be there long enough to find a reason to unpack.

Spencer looked. Brendon slowly and dramatically opened the door. "Look look look!" he exclaimed, running into the open space it exposed. Behind the door was a minuscule hallway with one light above their heads, a bare bulb with a metal pull chain. Brendon pulled the string and the grinned, presumably because the light was in proper working condition. "Look look," he continued, and turned to open the door facing them. He swung it open hard and it slammed against the wall on the other side.

Suddenly they were looking at Brent. He was unpacking, like he was doing it deliberately just to prove Spencer's thoughts all wrong. Ryan was pretending to sleep on his bed against the window. "Our rooms are adjoining," Brent explained flatly.

"Holy fucking shit," Brendon concluded.

Spencer took a slow breath in and out. He looked at Ryan. "Ryan," he called out.

Brendon's smile fell. "Why do you have to be such a bummer?"

He had no answer. "I'm sorry, I just..."

"You'll thank me tonight," Brendon cut him off. "Adjoining rooms are going to make this party."

No one spoke.

"As opposed to break it," Brendon clarified.

"Ryan," Spencer said again, louder. Ryan mumbled something incoherent and rolled over to hide his face in his pillow. Spencer gave up.

\----

He was unsure, but Spencer assumed dealing with Ryan Ross was akin to the way a nation under siege might treat an influential foreign diplomat with the power to save them. One was obligated to be polite and courteous to him at first, and never show him your flaws. And never, under any circumstance, were you to insult him. In fact, before meeting with him, it was a good idea to go over all the ways you might inadvertently offend him, so you could be sure to avoid it. After knowing Ryan for nearly his entire life, Spencer knew all the ways a person might insult him. The easiest, most frequently repeated, number one mistake anyone ever made was to ask him how things were at home.

Spencer watched as a child when adults would pat a younger Ryan on the shoulder and say,"How are things at home?" Even then he could almost see little pieces of his best friend pick up and carry on out of him, like he was being demoralized in a way for which only Spencer had eyes.

He wanted to tell these people Ryan was a human being apart from the older, less responsible man and woman he sometimes happened to live with. Ask him about the poem he wrote, ask him about the skateboard trick he just learned, ask him about anything at all that had something to do with who he really was, Spencer wanted to blurt out, but he kept his mouth shut. He was in no better position than Ryan to have an opinion with such little experience to back it up. Opinions then were reserved for people over the legal drinking age.

But they continued on with it, with this disgusting question that Ryan sometimes answered honestly and sometimes shrugged off and sometimes lied completely in response to, fooling people with a bat of his eyelashes. First it was teachers at school, Spencer's own parents, the parents of kids who came to his eleventh birthday party, and every birthday party after that. Later, the question morphed and melded into the brains of the kids who used to be too naive to ask it, drunk on the power being a teenager gave them, how it made them feel opinionated. That was when kids really began to pick on him, in a way that actually hurt him, when they could tease him under the false pretense of being concerned. That was when Ryan began distancing himself from people.

But Ryan had friends. The people Ryan called friends followed a strict code of conduct that involved many things, not the least of which was never asking Ryan how things were at home. They would not ask about his father, they would not ask about his mother, they would not even ask about any physical trouble of his house, like whether or not the air conditioner worked or when it was that someone last paid the electric bill. Keep things magnificently shallow, and you were a friend to Ryan.

When the band had still never set foot outside of a garage, Ryan's group of friends were a bunch of bonehead kids from the suburbs who thought themselves exceptionally punk rock. They used glue for hair gel and had unfortunate facial piercings and liked to have deep conversations about pastries that would occasionally lapse into deep conversations about the meaning of life and it was all, as far as Spencer knew, without the aid of drugs.

Spencer did not consider himself to be one of Ryan's regular friends. The rules he knew so intimately never did apply to him.

\----

"How are things back home?" Spencer asked him in a low voice, accidentally bumping his nose into Ryan's ear and not even noticing how it probably should have been awkward.

He felt drunk. This was an impossibility, because Ryan was presently in one of the two phases he so adored moving in between. That night, and for the past three months, Ryan was adamantly, pointedly, not drinking. Sometimes he would get together with his group of regular friends and be convinced inheriting genes was a myth, and drink to his heart's content. Recently had not been one of those times. Spencer, chivalrous as ever, was splitting a two-liter bottle of Sprite with him. He refrained from saying something to the effect of, "If you're not going to have any fun, neither am I." Still, he felt drunk.

Brendon had a giggling girl on each arm and was showing them the ins and outs of the hallway that adjoined the band's hotel rooms. He kept looking at Spencer when the girls weren't paying attention and mouthing, 'Which one?' at him. Spencer pretended he hadn't the faintest talent in lip reading and would shrug and slip further away from him. Brent had the nerve to actually talk music with a guy Spencer thought was the boyfriend of one of the girls hanging off of Brendon.

Ryan shifted his weight and leaned closer to Spencer. He shrugged one shoulder and kept his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. "I don't know, actually. I haven't checked in since..." He didn't finish his sentence, just took a drink from his red plastic cup and smiled at a girl who said 'hi' to him in passing.

"Do you want me to-" Spencer began. It was his self-imposed obligation to make sure Ryan was okay and that when his family inevitably and completely fell apart, he wouldn't be alone. He had to ask, and Ryan had to answer honestly, and when Ryan wasn't doing what he was supposed to, Spencer had to intervene.

"What are you going to do?" Ryan shot back. He looked a little bit guilty for these unkind words, but said nothing, and took a small step away from Spencer. "I'll call soon," he said in a tone that assured it was an empty promise.

Brendon was waving at Spencer, trying to get his attention and pleading with him to join him on the other side of the room. Whatever moment of closeness Spencer had accidentally pushed himself into with Ryan was clearly over, and he was about to join Brendon when Ryan spoke again.

"Do you think..." he said thoughtfully.

Spencer was in mid-step, but brought his foot back and tried to play it off like he hadn't been about to walk away. "What?"

Ryan gave him a sidelong glance and looked away again with a smile. "Do you want to break into the pool later? I really fucking want to go swimming."

"Do you want to go right now?"

Ryan shook his head. "No, people would notice and everyone would follow us and the hotel would kick us out. Just you and I would be quieter."

"Spencer!" Brendon yelled. "Come here!"

"Okay," Spencer said to Ryan, and Ryan smiled again, even if it did only last a second.

"I think Brendon wants you for something," he said.

Spencer set his red plastic cup on the counter next to Ryan's elbow. "I'll be right back."

\----

Oddly enough, when they were kids it was Ryan who was a freak about cards. First it was Magic cards, when one of Spencer's older cousins gave him an entire shoe-box full. Neither Ryan nor Spencer knew how to play. The rules were stupidly complex and neither cared to learn. Instead Ryan dumped the entire box out on the ratty carpet in the middle of Spencer's room. He sorted all the cards into piles by type, then resorted them into piles according to which illustrations he liked best. Spencer would have tossed them back into the shoe-box all haphazard, but Ryan insisted on rubber-banding each pile and putting them away neatly. He went to the library and looked up lists on the internet of how much each card was worth. Whenever he could wheedle five dollars from his dad he made Spencer walk to the magazine store so he could buy another tinfoil packet in hopes of getting the Black Lotus.

Eventually Spencer gave all the damn cards to Ryan, who stored them in binders purchased from the Five and Dime in the strip mall near the highway. The Magic cards lasted maybe nine months, but there were Pokemon cards after that, which Ryan traded during lunch, sitting on the scorching blacktop in a corner of the basketball court. Ryan liked the holographic ones best. He'd traded for a card from Japan, which he kept in his pocket for at least two weeks. By the time they entered middle school, Ryan's obsession was fading, but the binders of cards still sat on his bookshelf for years, always suspiciously dust free.

One of the kids Ryan traded Pokemon cards with was named Stephen. He was probably the geekiest boy in Ryan's grade. Even Spencer, a year younger, knew instinctively to treat him with a little scorn. Stephen was the kind of kid who could talk to you every day for a month and not know your name. Spencer thought this was why Ryan liked him so much. The summer after Ryan finished in fifth grade Stephen became an awkward part of their routine, showing up at Ryan's house two or three times a week to show off his latest acquisitions. Ryan sat Indian style on the floor while Stephen delicately pulled cards out of their tiny PVC sleeves. When Stephen deigned to hand one over, Ryan peered reverently, his nose close to the plastic. Spencer found this so boring he considered going home, but he worried that if he left Ryan might try to trade his guitar for Stephen's holographic Charizard.

Ryan's father called him downstairs to do the dishes. Ryan looked pained and told Spencer and Stephen he'd be right back. Spencer rolled his eyes, because he didn't like how Ryan's dad made demands of him without any warning. Stephen snuffled (his allergies were bothering him, he said) and nodded. Stephen tidied the binder of cards he had been showing Ryan and pulled a deck of regular old playing cards out of the wheeled backpack he carried everywhere. He started to shuffle the cards with the ease of a pro.

"What are you doing?" Spencer asked.

"Um?" Stephen said. "I was going to play solitaire, but we could play a game if you want."

"I don't really know any card games," Spencer admitted. His mom thought cards were slightly profane, and for his father they were a tiresome reminder of work.

Stephen looked slightly peeved. "What about war? Can you play war?"

Spencer had played that a few times while visiting his Grandma. "I guess," he said.

Stephen dealt the cards. "It's more fun to play for money," he said. "Otherwise it's dumb."

Spencer frowned. "I don't think so."

Stephen rolled his eyes. "It's just a kid's game, otherwise," he said. "We can play for dimes, if you're scared."

"I'm not scared," Spencer said. "I just don't see why we have to play for money."

"It doesn't mean anything otherwise," Stephen said. He slapped down his first card.

"Fine. Dimes," said Spencer.

The rhythm of the cards hitting the pile was sharp and mechanical. Spencer tried to be alert. He wondered if there were some point of strategy he was missing. Finally, two eights were dealt. Spencer's throat felt a little tight. He wanted to know what cards Stephen would deal. He wanted to know the cards in his own hand. There was nothing he could do but flip out three cards -- a six, a jack, and a queen. Stephen narrowed his eyes. He dealt out his own cards -- a five, an eight, and a ten. The tightness in Spencer's throat relaxed, like a stretched rubber band let go. He gathered up the cards. The stack was thick. They did it again, and again. Stephen looked annoyed and declared they were done. Spencer had twelve more cards. Grudgingly, Stephen counted out twelve dimes. Spencer stuffed them in his pocket.

He'd won. He had done nothing and he had won.

\----

"This is the lovely Miss Kaye," Brendon said, flourishing his hand. "And this is ravishing Taran." Brendon squeezed her. Both girls giggled. Brendon was drunk and there was a patch of red across the bridge of his nose. "I was just telling them that there's no way my friend Spencer Smith would ignore us. Not Spencer. He's a gentleman."

Spencer gave them a tight lipped smile. He felt disoriented. Nothing felt quite real. Brendon was still wearing the top hat he'd taken from the photo shoot hours earlier.

"These ladies are from New York," Brendon said. He grinned. The girls laughed. The music stopped and started again, some rap song blaring through the speakers. It was so awful Spencer needed to close his eyes. "They saw us at Irving Plaza and decided they needed to relive the magic."

That could have been the slogan for a cruise line. Spencer thought of walking away. His mother had infused him with too much old fashioned politeness. "Did you enjoy the show tonight?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," said Taran. "You guys are good." She was darker and taller and looked less malnourished than her friend. She was pretty. Spencer recognized that, but he couldn't concentrate. He wondered what Ryan was doing, who he was talking to now, if he was talking to anyone. If Spencer took too long, he would head off to the pool alone. That seemed like something that could not be allowed to happen.

"Brendon's got the sexiest voice," Kaye said. She wrapped herself further around him. Brendon got a mouthful of crimped platinum hair.

There was a commotion near the door. The crowd parted ... for a wheel chair? Pushed by one of the guys from the opening local band. In the wheelchair was a keg swaddled by blankets, topped with a grinning, orange-skinned rubber mask of Bill Clinton. Apparently this hotel was staffed by the blind. Spencer frowned. The posted occupancy for these two suites was no more than twenty. There were close to three times that number in there then.

"Oh man," Brendon said. He was grinning like a fool. Kaye, on his arm, jumped a little and stumbled. Brendon tried to catch her but he was hardly better off and they both went down. Tangled, they laughed so hard tears leaked from the corners of Brendon's eyes and his face turned the color of strawberry sherbet. Kaye's dress had fallen off her shoulder. She was no less than five inches away from displaying her sheer black brassiere to all assembled.

Spencer shook his head, bent down, and helped her up. She was at least a half a foot shorter than he was, and seemed to weigh nothing at all. He pulled Brendon to his feet. "If you want to try that again, the bed's over there," Spencer said.

Brendon kept laughing. He might have been hyperventilating. Kaye was enough of a lady that she looked at least a little abashed as she straightened her dress.

The keg was installed in the bathtub. Brent carried ice from the machine down the hall in a grocery bag. The lamp on the table beside Ryan's bed was knocked to the ground. Brendon kept talking -- sometimes nothing could get him to shut up -- but his words verged on unintelligible. Someone hit the light switch. The room was soaked in dark. The music did not let up. A hand fumbled for Spencer's arm, pulled him close.

"I hate the dark," Taran said.

"Me too," Spencer said, although the dark had never before scared him. He felt sick. "I need to ... Let's to go outside."

They pushed through the jumbled crowd, through Brendon's beloved hallway, and into the other room. It was just as crowded, if quieter. Taran still held his hand. Spencer swallowed to quell his nausea. He looked around -- Ryan was nowhere to be seen. He wanted to go find him. He was not sure that Ryan was well and safe. He needed to find out. He needed ...

Taran tugged his him towards the door. Spencer went. In the hall it was calm, clean, polished. These were things Spencer liked about hotels and wished he did not. The ding of the elevator as it sank towards the ground floor was like a lullaby. Spencer was soothed. Taran was content not to speak and he liked her better for it. Outside it was very cold. New Jersey weather in February was alien to all of Spencer's experience. He hadn't worn a coat. Their breath hung nebulous and white before it disbursed. Taran was warm and close and he shared her heat.

"I have a room here," Taran murmured.

Spencer looked at her. Away from the dark, away from her stupid friend, she looked not old but mature. She was old enough to drink at least, he thought. He wondered if she knew he was eighteen years old, or if she cared. The way she stood and the quiet of her voice and the warmth of her body made him think she did not.

Spencer imagined going upstairs with her, standing with his hands in his pockets while she unlocked her room, which would smell of smoke and be littered with flimsy pretty clothes, more disorderly than it had any right to be. Spencer would be nervous. She would be kind. In the morning he would smirk and Brendon would know and give him a high five over the breakfast table. Nothing had changed and he felt no different, but the goddess of good fortune had led him to this moment.

Ryan was waiting for him somewhere, or had already gone, or did not care. Spencer didn't know sometimes, and sometimes wished he did not care, either. He'd offered to go to the pool with Ryan. Ryan had said to wait. He would do anything Ryan asked of him, but Ryan so rarely asked for anything at all.

He smiled as disingenuously as he could, and said, "Well, I think we better go inside, then."

\----

On the surface, Ryan was at an extreme disadvantage: he was thin as a reed, and his ears were kind of big, and a lot of his clothes were from the second hand store. Even still, girls had always liked him. Grown up women babied him and asked him if he were getting enough to eat. Spencer's little sisters thought he was the most amazing person in the world because he occasionally let them do his hair and paint his nails with purple sparkles. And girls his own age always liked Ryan. Tiffany Alvarez had a crush on Ryan from the first grade on. He always got invited to Barbie-themed birthday parties at the skating rink. Seventh grade, the only year Spencer and Ryan weren't at the same school, Ryan went out to the movies with a different girl nearly every Friday night.

He always had girlfriends. They were inevitably blonde and, as Spencer's mom put it, fast for their age. Spencer always hated them. Ryan seemed to kind of hate them too. He treated them like minor nuisances, never returning their phone calls and moaning when they made him take them out for late night pancakes at the IHOP. They never lasted longer than a few months, so Spencer didn't have to worry about them too much.

Spencer was kind of the opposite. He never thought girls had cooties, but he was never really friends with any, either. He played football in the fall and baseball in the spring. When he was little his favorite toys were trucks and when he finally persuaded his dad to get him a skateboard he had permanently skinned knees for six months. Girls were boring, like his little sisters, whose favorite game involved building houses of books and little odds and ends for their My Little Ponies. Spencer could hardly think of anything he'd less like to do.

Spencer's first kiss came in the TV room of Megan Wallace's house when he was in eighth grade. He'd gone with Ryan. Nearly everyone was older. They played spin the bottle and when it was Spencer's turn the bottle pointed at a girl named Amy who was a little dowdy. They both leaned forward and Spencer pressed his lips against hers. They were soft. It didn't really feel like anything. If Ryan hadn't brought it up on the way home later that night, Spencer might have forgotten it ever happened.

Ryan came over late sometimes, if bad things happened, so Spencer wasn't too surprised when he heard the door bell ring at twelve thirty one Friday night when he was fourteen. Ryan ran up the stairs. He pushed open the door and stood pale and shaking leaning against Spencer's desk.

"What happened?" Spencer asked. "What did he do?"

"No," Ryan said. "Nothing. It wasn't Dad."

"Oh," Spencer said.

"I. Um." Ryan blushed. Spencer had rarely seen him so disconcerted. "I slept with Emma."

That was the name of Ryan's girl of the week.

"Dude," Spencer said. He wasn't surprised, exactly, but still ... Theirs was not a friendship based on mawkish confession of secrets. "What was it like?"

"Ummm," Ryan said. "Wet?"

"Gross," Spencer said. It was only Ryan; Spencer didn't care if Ryan thought he was a baby.

"Yeah," Ryan said. He laughed. "A little."

"Did she kick you out or something?" Spencer asked.

"No," Ryan said. "I didn't want to stay." He shrugged. "Emma's pretty annoying."

"So you came here," Spencer said.

"Where else would I go?" Ryan asked.

\----

The sheets were dank with the stink of their sweat. Taran tipped her head back and rolled her shoulders. "You can stay if you want," she said.

"No," said Spencer. He felt uncomfortable. He didn't have anything to say to her. "I have to go find my friend."

"Okay," Taran said. She slipped out from beneath the sheets, naked and pale in the orange light. Spencer closed his eyes and for a moment relived the sensations of her body. She pulled on a tee shirt and fished a cigarette from a pack tossed on the floor. "You've got my number."

"Yeah," he said. He felt very much as though he had inadvertently wandered into the frame of some film. He had no script to follow. "Thanks."

"Thank you," Taran said, laughing. She sat with her legs crossed, her feet pointed towards the ground, her breasts round and obvious under the thin stretch of her shirt, her hair a springy dark mass. He thought she was probably the best woman in the world. No course of events he could have imagined seemed to justify his being here. He dressed with his back to her and toed into his shoes. She kissed him once more, voluptuous, and then he stepped into the hall.

The hotel was solemn and silent as a church. No one stirred. All the parties were long since over. All revelers had long since found their way back to the soft of their beds. The air conditioners exhaled gently. The mirrored interior walls of the elevator seemed a special kind of torture. Spencer's head ached. He violated a fierce silence as he crossed the lobby. His heels knocked against the marble floor. This hotel was an echo of something far grander. This city was a strange reflection of Las Vegas, but it felt very far from home. The night clerk dozed behind the desk. The pool was down a wide corridor lined with tall palms. The horrible faux-bronze double doors were cracked open.

Inside, teal light rippled over the domed ceiling. Ryan's shoes and clothing were heaped by the edge of the pool. He was a blur under the glazed surface of the water. Spencer dragged a chaise to the edge of the pool. He nearly slipped on the wet tile. He took off his shoes and tucked his socks inside. He sat and dipped his feet in the pool. The water was cool but not cold.

Ryan swam a few laps and then came and clung to the edge near Spencer's feet. He wrapped a hand around Spencer's right ankle. "Nice to see you, stranger," he said.

Spencer smiled. "How'd you get in here?"

"I stole the key," Ryan said. "Where were you?"

"Upstairs," Spencer said. "I didn't see you leave."

Ryan slipped under the water for the moment, and then emerged. Water clung to his eyelashes and to his eyebrows.

"I got bored," he said. "I looked for you."

Spencer brushed his hair back from his eyes. "Maybe I was helping Brent get more ice."

"Maybe," Ryan said, evenly. "You want to swim?"

"No," Spencer said. The chill in the air was palpable.

Ryan hauled himself out of the water. In the blue light, his skin was gray. He was still painfully thin, his back striped by a shocking ridge of spine. The big white hotel towel wrapped around him twice.

"Brendon made an idiot of himself tonight," Ryan said. He curled up, his knees against his chest.

"He was just having fun," Spencer said, although he agreed.

"He's going to do something stupid," Ryan said. He was in a contrary mood. Ryan's two most frequent frames of mind were lovelorn poet and crotchety old man.

"He's Brendon," Spencer said. "Would that surprise you in the least?"

"It's different now," Ryan said.

"Not everyone has the supreme force of will you have, Ryan," said Spencer. He rubbed his big toe against the cool wall of the pool. "We're supposed to be having fun. Aren't we supposed to be having fun?"

Ryan looked down. He said nothing.

"Aren't you having fun?" Spencer asked.

Ryan was quiet.

"You make me worry," Spencer said.

Ryan laughed. It was jarring, a rasp against the smooth cool of that room. "You don't have to worry about me, Spence," Ryan said.

"I always worry about you," Spencer said. That was the one purpose of the last thirteen years of his life.

"I know," Ryan said. He got up and sat down next to Spencer on the chaise. He was still dripping. He leaned his wet head against Spencer's shoulder. "I need you here."

Spencer said nothing. It had been a long time since they'd been this alone. Spencer felt as though there ought to be more for them to say. Instead, he could think of nothing. A strange emptiness had pushed its way between them. He could count the number of times he'd lied to Ryan on the fingers of one hand. The soft puff of Ryan's breath against the bare skin of his shoulder was not enough fuse them back together.

He turned, looked down.

"Ryan ..." he said.

Ryan looked up, and kissed him.

It was very soft, very different. Ryan stank of chlorine. His skin was slightly pruned. Spencer hoped that the scent of Taran's perfume did not linger in his hair. Their noses bumped. Ryan's eyes were closed.

They both went still. Spencer pulled away. "What was that?" he asked, quietly.

"I just..." Ryan said. "I don't know."

Spencer felt mulish. He stood. "You don't know?" he asked.

"It was nothing," Ryan said.

"No," Spencer said. "It can't be like that with us."

Ryan frowned. "Why do you have to act like I can't handle anything like an adult?"

"Because you can't," Spencer said. "Everything's a disaster for you, Ryan."

"Do you think I want things to be that way?" Ryan asked.

"I don't know," Spencer said. "Sometimes I think you do."

Ryan got to his feet. "If that's not a lie, you don't know me as well as you think."

He shoved Spencer then, sharp, quick, violent, and with more force than Spencer expected. Were it not for the shock of it and the slick of the wet tile floor, Spencer would have shoved back, might have punched him, wanted badly in that moment to see Ryan bleed, but instead he fell. He hit the water in a second and floundered in the cold. His sinuses flooded and stung. His eyes burned. His clothing dragged. By the time he made it to the surface, sputtering and faint, Ryan was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Spencer had a problem. He had ten million problems, really; he had so many problems he could line them up and categorize them, but he had one problem in particular, just at that moment. It was keeping him from participating in the fun everyone around him was having. It was holding him back. He looked at his plate of food, which he had still scarcely touched, and wondered if he could ask for a discount for not eating the majority of it. Maybe he could pretend it was poisoned, or that there was a cockroach on his lettuce leaf.

"Emu," Ryan said casually.

Brendon clapped his hands together once. "E-M-U, emu."

Everyone looked at Jon, except Spencer, who was still staring, on the verge of terror, at his sandwich. "Um," Jon pondered. "Llama?"

Brendon rolled his eyes.

"Egg," Ryan said, despite that it wasn’t even his turn.

"E-M-U, E-G-G," Brendon spelled out. "Van!"

Ryan snorted."Emu egg van?"

"I would totally be in that band," Jon said.

"I have been in that band," Ryan joked, and people laughed. What Spencer wouldn’t have given to be one of them, with the carefree ability to laugh at jokes, or to smile in general.

"V-A-N," Brendon said and looked at Spencer.

"Um," Spencer said. He couldn’t concentrate. "Pan."

"Lame," Jon deemed immediately. Spencer didn’t care.

"P-A-N." Brendon looked to the ceiling in deep thought. His face lit up a moment later and he wordlessly prepared them all for the genius they were about to witness. "M.V.P."

"Most valuable pan!" Jon exclaimed, and they were all in hysterics again. Spencer’s smile came out like a grimace.

The waitress returned to their booth and dropped the bill in the middle of the table. She looked from Spencer’s plate into Spencer’s eyes and he prepared for the worst. "Was everything okay?" she asked him.

Spencer recognized this moment as the perfect opportunity for his plan. He desperately willed his mind to say it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever eaten in his life. "Everything was fine," he said instead, and then tried to smile at her, too.

"We’re going to the VMAs!" Brendon interrupted, sort of screaming at her.

She smiled. "Yes, I gathered that from the first three times you told me."

When she walked away Brendon said quietly, "She must be married to Sting, or something. Nothing impresses her anymore."

"Isn’t Sting married to that-" Jon said, and said more, but Spencer stopped listening. That conversation, along with the VMA sound-alike band-naming game, version 1.0, faded into the background. He watched the three of them pull various bills from their wallets and throw them without looking in the open space between their plates. They stood up, ready to leave. Spencer couldn’t move.

Their conversation lulled to a stop until they all froze and stared at him.

He swallowed but his throat was dry. "I don’t have any cash on me," he said.

Ryan scoffed. Jon said they were going to be late. Brendon said, "But I thought..." and trailed off. Ryan said they’d be waiting for him in the car.

Spencer nodded to himself, making a Plan B in his head. The three of them would wait in the car while they assumed he would have a credit card scanned; in actuality, he would go to the restroom and climb out of the window and run away. It couldn’t possibly be very hard to do.

But Brendon smiled and sat down again. Jon and Ryan left, a little bell above the door ringing as they went. "I’ll wait with you, Spence," Brendon said.

Plan C, in the unlikely event that Brendon stays. Plan C... Spencer had no Plan C. "I just, um," he said, and hopelessly flicked through the credit cards in his wallet, cards that he knew would be declined.

"Yeah, I can see that," Brendon said. He pulled more money out of his own wallet and set it on the table. "Grab that sandwich, we’re leaving."

Spencer’s face felt hot and he couldn’t look Brendon in the eyes. "I’ll pay you back," he said finally.

"Are you planning on telling Ryan... I don’t know, ever?" Brendon asked.

"Telling Ryan what?" Spencer asked. His pulse quickened.

Brendon did not answer. He caught sight of the waitress again but before he could get a word out, she spoke, balancing a pile of plates in each hand.

"Yeah, yeah, I got it," she said. "The VMAs."

\----

When Ryan was in ninth grade he spent an entire night without going to sleep. Spencer had to fix it.

"No one came home," he said to Spencer on the phone at 10:00 at night (the very last minute Spencer was allowed to be on the phone on a school night.) His father didn't come home that night, but Ryan stayed awake, waiting. Ryan didn’t explicitly tell Spencer he was going to do this, but Spencer knew anyway. He showed up at Ryan’s house at 5:00 the next morning with a can of Mountain Dew and a five page history report, due that very day. Spencer wrote it and put Ryan’s name on it. Ryan got an A.

When the band was quite young Ryan threw a party that resulted in his only guitar being broken, and Spencer had to fix that, too. Ryan called him at 3:00 in the morning that time, because by then they were older and were more apt to break the rules, and anyway, they had cell phones with a vibrate option that never woke anybody up. The party had dispersed around midnight, and even Ryan told Spencer to have a nice night, which Spencer took to mean he should leave. Ryan whispered hysterically on the phone, trying to scream without making noise, saying that something terrible had happened and Spencer needed to get to him immediately. Spencer ran faster than he had ever run in his life, his heart broken for his best friend who must have been hurt somehow, or who might have just witnessed someone he loved leave forever. Spencer clutched at his chest while he gasped for air and burst in through the front door, prepared for the worst, and only found Ryan looking dismally at his guitar, which, from a distance, appeared to be perfectly fine. Upon inspection, the neck had a crack and Ryan literally had tears in his eyes because he could never afford to buy another one. Spencer agreed to give him the money to fix it, but kept his lips pressed tightly together after that. He had no idea how to say what he thought Ryan needed to hear, because somehow he knew Ryan did not deserve to hear it.

When twenty-five days had passed since the last time any of them had seen Brent Wilson, Spencer had to fix it. Ryan got the attention of Brendon and Spencer, while a tray of catered vegetables happily distracted Jon. Ryan took them to the first deserted room he could find, which happened to be a men’s public restroom, and when the door slammed loudly behind them, he turned off the light.

"Are you going to kill us?" Brendon asked in the pitch black.

Ryan took a deep breath in, and Spencer heard it shaking. "Spencer, you have to fix this," he whispered.

"Why are we whispering?" Brendon whispered.

"Fix what?" Spencer asked, not consenting to a whisper but not quite speaking out loud, either. He couldn’t see either of them.

"The fucking Brent thing," Ryan said. "I’ve been staring at the doors for a month, hoping he won’t show up again. What if he does?"

"Then we’re up for a painfully awkward conversation between him and Jon," Brendon answered.

"I think it might be a sign," Ryan continued, perhaps talking to himself. "I’m afraid it’s a sign. If he’s gone, what if someone else goes?"

"I’m not going anywhere," Spencer promised.

"I’m not going anywhere, either," Brendon said.

"If this band is over, my whole life is over," Ryan said.

Spencer had no response. Not even Brendon knew what to say. The words hung in the air between them and Spencer’s eyes grew used to the dark. He could see the line of Brendon’s nose, the pale of Ryan’s cheekbones.

A million things ran through his mind. For a moment he tried to imagine what would happen to Ryan if the band split up, and he honestly had no idea. Spencer wondered why he wasn’t more worried about himself. Maybe it was because he knew he would be fine, and he wasn’t sure that Ryan would be. Maybe it was because he didn’t know if either one of them would be fine, and he couldn’t handle knowing both of them needed help. Someone had to be pushed out of the picture. No one was going to take care of Spencer.

"Jon," Spencer said finally. "Jon is the new Brent, and we’ll be fine."

There was another long pause. "Really?" Brendon asked of the silence.

"Really," Spencer said.

He pulled his phone out of his back pocket. The glow of the screen illuminated their faces blue. Ryan’s eyes glinted, and Brendon was still uncharacteristically quiet. It meant something very serious was happening. "I’m finishing it," Spencer said while he dialed. "I’m fixing it."

\----

Ryan sat in the middle of stage at Radio City Music Hall with a wad of tissue pressed to his face and a smear of dried blood on his chin. More dark blood stained his white shirt. A few paramedics huddled around him. The dancer who had tripped him was named Keltie Colleen, which Spencer thought was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. He got her name from a harried looking production assistant with a headset, a walkie-talkie, and three rolls of duct tape on her belt. Keltie sat at the side of the stage with the other dancers, all garbed in black spandex leggings and sloppy large tee shirts. They were a bored, cliquish crew. Keltie was blond and plastic pretty. Spencer would have disliked her on sight, regardless of what she'd done to Ryan.

"It's a wonder your nose isn't broken," one of the paramedics said. "We really should take you in for an x-ray. It could be a hairline fracture."

"No," snapped Ryan. "I'm fine."

"Dude," Brendon said. "You're still bleeding. I know we agreed on costumes but I think someone's already got dibs on the vampire thing."

"I'll go tomorrow," Ryan said. His head was tipped all the way back. "It'll stop bleeding soon."

Brendon continued to press the case. The paramedics looked glad for an advocate. Jon sat on the drum riser. It was still too soon for him to get involved in these kinds of things. Anyway, Spencer doubted he cared. The stage manager was attempting to incinerate them with her eyes. Spencer flipped open his phone. It was after noon. They were running nearly an hour and a half behind schedule. Something needed to be done.

The stage manager looked ready to get violent as Spencer approached, but when he told her that they didn't need to finish rehearsing their act, she nearly melted with relief. She shouted something into her radio and tech guys appeared as if from the ether and started to cart away their gear. The paramedics were still dithering. Spencer crouched down beside Ryan.

"How are you?" he asked.

Ryan stared out at the golden arched ceiling.

"He's fine," Spencer said. "We'll go back to the hotel until this evening and let him rest up."

The paramedics glumly dispersed. Spencer helped Ryan to his feet. Brendon was watching them both with overly bright eyes. "Go get Jon," Spencer snapped at him. Brendon frowned at him. Spencer immediately felt guilty. Brendon was a good friend, a good guy. Plus, he never bought into Spencer's bullshit. Spencer's mother worked in a pediatrician's office. Her tired mantra was that patience is a virtue. Spencer closed his eyes and repeated it to himself twice.

Ryan's hands were ice cold.

"Do you want my sweatshirt?" Spencer asked.

"No," Ryan said. He jerked away from Spencer.

"I want ..." Spencer said, and then stopped. Ryan wasn't listening. "I'll have them get rid of that girl if you want. Keltie. A PA told me her name is Keltie."

Ryan frowned at him. Ryan had this talent of making his face completely blank, like the dark screen of a dead television. Spencer wasn't sure if he was glad or offended. He felt conspicuous and foolish, standing there with his hand on Ryan's elbow. They were at center stage, but practically invisible. The crew was swapping the set pieces. Electricians clung to scaffolds near the ceiling. Lowly interns wove through the aisles, taping xeroxed name tags to the backs of seats.

"What do you want me to do?" Spencer asked.

Ryan said nothing. He walked towards the wing, still holding the soiled tissues to his nose. Spencer followed, suddenly furious. Everything he tried to do was rotten. He'd done all of this for Ryan, or at least with Ryan, and it didn't seem like that made a difference now.

Spencer thought Ryan would head off stage and through the tangle of little hallways back stage, and out on to the street, and for all he knew, straight into a taxi cab that could deliver him anywhere in the world. Ryan could leave, if he wanted. He had the means and he had the time and maybe he even had the willpower to do that. But instead Ryan stopped short in front of the gaggle of dancers. He glared at them all for a moment.

"Who's Keltie?" he asked.

Spencer knit his brows. Ryan hated confrontation.

Keltie smiled and raised her hand. Her teeth were fake and bleach white. "That's me," she said. She was older than Spencer had originally guessed. He glared at her on Ryan's behalf.

"Well," Ryan said. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for getting in your way."

She giggled. It was horrible. Spencer didn't know what Ryan was doing.

"Oh, it's fine," Keltie said. She leaned back on her arms. "How's your nose?"

"It hurts," Ryan said, sounding as if he hadn't previously realized.

"Poor thing," Keltie said. All the long-legged girls tittered.

"I'll be okay," Ryan said. He smiled. It was painful to watch.

"I hope," Keltie said.

"Well, bye," he said. "Maybe I'll see you tonight."

\----

Ryan came up with the idea when he was thirteen. Spencer always thought it was stupid, but it was Ryan who said, "trust me" a thousand times, until Spencer did, and agreed to participate. Spencer was pretty sure that apparently magnificent idea of Ryan’s must have stemmed from a school assignment, because that’s always what it felt like when Ryan made him sit down and write it. Like homework. As they both grew older, Spencer pretended to appreciate it, every birthday, but he secretly thought it was stupid until the first time they weren’t at home.

"So, I’m still new at this, I don’t know how it goes yet," Jon said the first time they toured through a late summer, on just the right days. "Are we going to have two parties?"

"No!" Ryan said, immediately putting the thought to rest. "We’re sharing a party. We’re having a joint party."

"We’re having a joint party?" Brendon asked, perking up from the magazine he was reading.

Ryan narrowed his eyes at him.

The party ended up being exactly, if not more so, as pointless as Spencer had imagined it would be. He didn’t even know what city they were in, except that it must have been on a coast, because there was a nearby ocean. Maybe it was Florida. Last he knew, they were landlocked and the air was frigid, but at his and Ryan’s combined birthday party the weather was mild and he sat by himself watching waves lap at his bare toes.

The party was dwindling down as morning grew near. Ryan had convinced himself to drink; had one drink, and then had a minor mental breakdown about it. He yelled at everyone nearby who had allowed him to do it. People laughed at him in response, Spencer told him everything would be okay, and Ryan never felt a thing in his bloodstream.

Most of the people there, other bands on the tour and friends of friends of friends, were unaware the party was for Spencer and Ryan’s birthdays. When they learned, they would say things like, "Shit! I don’t have a present!" Some girl kept trying to kiss Spencer. His mother wouldn’t stop calling. He was futilely content to sit alone and press the ‘ignore’ button on his phone all night. He wished they could just get back on the bus and leave. He wondered if Ryan forgot.

The distinct and always sophisticated sound of someone vomiting, probably the girl that kept trying to kiss him, came from somewhere behind, and then there was a soft thud in the sand to his right. Ryan was still wearing his makeup and clothes from the show earlier, but it was all smudged and limp from overuse and exhaustion. He smiled at Spencer."Ready?"

Spencer rolled his eyes. "Did you really bring one all the way out here?"

Ryan’s face fell. "Didn’t you?"

"Mine have been in a shoe-box under my bed for years, I didn’t even think of it before we left," Spencer said. He maneuvered a little to reach into his back pocket and produce a folded piece of paper. "Just kidding."

Ryan laughed and hit him on the shoulder. "Asshole," he said with a smile, and they traded letters.

"I’m going first," Spencer announced, unfolding Ryan’s note and dramatically clearing his throat before beginning. "’Hi, Spence,’" he began.

Ryan laughed. "I did not write ‘hi Spence.’"

"You did so, look," Spencer pointed at the words written on top of his page, in scribbled pencil. "Now shut up and let me finish. ‘Hi, Spence, this is Ryan Ross.’"

Ryan snorted.

"’This is the only day of the year you get to be older than me. You are nineteen now, and I am only fourteen. I don’t know what you will look like when you are nineteen, maybe you will have a beard.’"

Ryan pulled his knees to his chin and hid his face. "Oh my God," he said.

"’I hope you are having a good day today, I hope you got lots of presents and ate pizza and ice cream. I hope we have a party together again, but maybe I will be in college and not in Las Vegas anymore. Maybe...’" Spencer’s eyes scanned the words before he read them aloud, and his smile faded as he went on. Ryan looked up at him when he paused. "’... Maybe you won’t know me anymore, maybe you won’t have my phone number and maybe you’ll be too busy for me. I don’t know what I want to do in college, but I have to go, and you have to go, too. I think you will go to college in Nevada still, but I bet I will leave. But I wouldn’t want to leave you. If I am gone, I hope you know that I was sad when I left, because I will miss you. Even if you call me and I say I have new friends in college and I can’t talk to you right now, I swear they’re not better friends than we are, I mean when we’re thirteen and fourteen. If you read this when you are nineteen then you know I thought about you six years later than it is now, as long as it took me to send this, and if I was ever mean to you I hope you know I didn’t mean it. Happy Birthday from Ryan.’"

Spencer looked at him.

"Okay," Ryan said, ready to explain. "I think we got in a little fight a few days before I wrote that, and I was suffering from acute childhood depression, or something."

Spencer didn’t say anything.

"Anyway," Ryan continued, "from now on all the rest are written when I am pretty sure we’re going to be rock stars instead of being hopelessly estranged from each other."

Spencer folded the note up again and put it in his pocket.

"I think in one of them I might say I hope today we’re on tour in India."

Spencer couldn’t feel bad through that, and he finally cracked a smile. "India?" he asked. "Bearded rock stars in India," he mused to the ocean.

"Being twenty is going to be great," Ryan replied. "Just wait and see." He unfolded Spencer’s letter.

\----

Their rooms were however many feet above the cloud line. Leaning out the open window, Spencer peered down through the matted mist. It wasn't raining. It hadn't rained yet, but he felt sure it would sometime that night. He wasn't nervous about the performance. He didn't care if they won any awards. He was glad for the gloom.

He was sharing with Brendon again. He nearly always shared with Brendon. Jon and Ryan had established a powerful roommate equilibrium based on leaving each other entirely alone. Spencer hadn't roomed with Ryan since before Atlantic City.

As usual, Brendon's method of unpacking defied any explanation. Immediately after he unzipped his bag his stuff was all over the room. A pile of his clothing dripped from the bed to the floor. His shoes sat atop a stack of coloring books on the nightstand. Spencer resisted the urge to sweep all the debris to the ground. In a suite at one of the best hotels in the country, Spencer felt worse than he'd ever felt. He pressed his face into the pillows. He wished it were night. He could sleep until morning. He reached across to his own nightstand for his phone. He opened it ... the battery had died. He cursed and tossed it to the ground. More trash. Brendon's phone, covered in holographic stickers, was on the end of his bed. Spencer grabbed it. It was three o'clock. They had to leave in two hours.

Brendon called from the bath. "Spencer Smith," he said, singsong. "You still out there?"

Spencer huffed. "Yeah," he said.

"Come here!"

"You're naked," Spencer complained half-heartedly. That excuse had never worked with Brendon before.

"I know," Brendon said. "But there's plenty of foam. And it's time for us to have our heart to heart, Spence."

Spencer had no excuse.

The bathroom was vast and steamy. Water poured from the tap into the sunken marble tub. Brendon sat in the middle of a mountain of bubbles, a flowered shower cap on his head.

"Sit!" Brendon exclaimed. "Sit, man."

Spencer sat on the toilet.

"Not over there," Brendon said. "How can we have a heart to heart if I can barely see you?"

"I'm three feet away," Spencer said.

"I know, but this is some epic foam."

Spencer rolled his eyes and moved to a fairly dry spot of floor.

"Spencer Smith," Brendon said. "Tell me what's up."

Spencer shrugged. "Nothing," he said. Brendon made a dissatisfied noise and sloshed some water out of the tub. "I don't know. I hate it."

Brendon looked thoughtful. "What do you hate?"

"Everything," Spencer said.

"No gloom and doom, Spence. C'mon. It's not as bad as all that."

"Close enough," Spencer said.

Brendon pouted. "Tell me what's going on!" he said. "Are you supporting a wife and kids somewhere? Laundering money for the mob? Did you fall for one of those email scams asking you to help someone dispose of the fortune of a Namibian prince?"

Spencer laughed, even though the wet was soaking through the seat of his jeans. "No," he said. "I don't know. I'm an idiot."

Brendon sunk lower into the water. "That's probably not a good thing, considering you're the brains of this operation."

Spencer snorted. "I'm not the brain of any operation, Brendon," he said. He shifted. Brendon hadn't turned on the fan; the humidity was tropical.

Laughing, Brendon said, "Well, I guess we're fucked then."

That seemed to Spencer to cleave right to the heart of the matter. "You're right," he said.

"No I'm not," Brendon said. "Honestly, what's in our job description?"

Spencer shrugged.

"We've got to travel all over the world. We've got to play our songs every night. We've got to get dolled up and photographed. We've got to attend glamorous award shows." He paused. "It's pretty gruesome, I guess."

"Okay," Spencer said. He was shamed, suddenly, by Brendon's words. "I guess things could be worse. I just ... this isn't like I thought it would be."

"What's not?" Brendon asked. "If you ask me, it's twice as good as I ever imagined."

"Yeah," said Spencer. "But ..."

"But?" Brendon asked. "But you're broke. But Ryan's still an asshole. Neither of those are exactly new developments."

"Ryan's not an asshole," Spencer said. For the most part, Brendon and Ryan got along so well that Spencer marveled, but when they didn't, the fights were colossal.

Brendon raised an eyebrow. "And you're not a knight in shining armor, but you both try your best to fool the rest of us."

Spencer hung his head.

"How much money did you lose?" Brendon asked. There was no levity in his voice now.

"How did you know?" he asked.

Brendon laughed. "Come on, man. I see you playing cee-lo with the guys almost every night. Someone mentions poker and you're the first one to the table."

"Everyone else is just as bad," Spencer said.

"Everyone else can afford to buy their own sandwich," Brendon said.

That stung. Spencer stood up. His head spun a little. He wanted out of the hotel, out of New York, out of the fucking band.

"Close your eyes," Brendon said. "And hand me that robe."

A terry robe with the hotel's logo embroidered on the breast was crumpled on the vanity. Spencer grabbed it and held it out gingerly to Brendon with his eyes closed and his head turned.

"Okay, you're good," Brendon said.

Spencer opened his eyes. The robe hung to Brendon's ankles. The sleeves billowed. Brendon's hair stuck up in prickly tufts when he pulled off the shower cap. Water swam on the floor. Brendon threw down some towels. Shortly, they were sopping. The tub drained. The bottom was covered with a layer of pink scum.

"If the band broke up," Brendon said as he vigorously toweled his hair, "I couldn't go home. My parents are okay with all of this now, but I can never go back there."

"I know," Spencer said. Brendon was a creature of complete elan. It was easy sometimes to forget that he'd given up more than any of them.

"I'm just saying," Brendon said. "It's never going to be like it was before for us."

"Yes," said Spencer. "But that's not the point ..."

Brendon was prodding at a zit in the enormous mirror. "What I'm trying to say, Spence, is that if you don't like the way things are going, that's fine, but if you're nostalgic for five years ago, you better give up. 2001 is not coming back. You and Ryan were never going to be fourteen forever. I think you need to figure out what you want." He caught Spencer's reflection in the mirror. "Anyway, we're going to the fucking VMAs tonight. Let's get this show on the road."

\----

Ryan always treated other people differently than everybody else treated each other. He had no real desire to get to know people. It was as though he had been bored with life the moment he came into it, that he already knew the capabilities and limitations of people and no single individual could sway his theory. The first time Ryan ever cursed in front of Spencer it was nonchalantly during a boring board game they played when they were eight and nine and within the phrase, "People are all inherently fucked up." Then he collected his money and spun the wheel. Spencer hadn't understood what he meant.

Sometimes Spencer looked at life like it was a performance, a dramatic piece. He started doing this after his parents dragged him and his sisters to see a high school rendition of Hamlet because some second cousin he didn’t know was playing Claudius. Horrible though it was, it inspired a spark of a thought in him on the drive home. The major players of Spencer’s life were great, comprised of his immediate family and Ryan; these were the people he assumed would always be there for him. He could see himself when he was thirty, or fifty, still relying on them the most. He might be married then, but whoever the girl would end up being, she didn’t know him right then, that evening, when he was twelve and buckled tightly into the back of his parent’s car. His sisters would remember his stupid shoes and his greasy hair; his parents would remember the gradual progression of his becoming more responsible and less innocent; Ryan would remember the exact shade of blue and green his eyes were when it was July and ten o’clock at night and the sun was hanging in purgatory.

With a sad flip of his heart, Spencer realized Ryan only had two major actors in his play, his father, and Spencer himself. Ryan had more family than that, of course, but they had already proven in one way or another that they couldn’t be much relied on. He worried that one day they would be old and Spencer would be busy with his wife and Ryan wouldn’t be able to find anyone to talk to about being a kid with. About firecrackers and swing sets and ant hills, about backyard baseball and public swimming pools and what would happen if they took a bus to Los Angeles together and never came back. It was the first time Spencer hoped dearly that Ryan would never get married. The girl would have absolutely no idea how to handle him.

For a long time, Spencer seemed to have nothing to worry about. Ryan was usually mean to girls. He was usually mean to everyone, actually, and if you were dumb enough to hang around afterwards, you might have a shot at being his friend. That was the exact reason Spencer was quite sure all of Ryan’s girlfriends were dumb. But it must have meant he was dumb, too.

Spencer and Ryan got into arguments with increasing prominence as they grew further into their teens, which was to be expected of anyone. They would fight about the proper way to make a bologna sandwich, or something equally as pointless, and underneath, the logical part of Spencer’s brain would know the true meaning behind it. The undying conflict between Spencer and Ryan as teenagers was always the same: Spencer never wanted Ryan to go home.

He asked his parents before he asked Ryan, and they sighed and looked weary and guilty and said they would prefer to wait until Ryan was sixteen before getting into it. "We can’t just adopt him," one of them had said. This infuriated Spencer. He was tired of smiling at Ryan and telling him to have a good night and inwardly feeling like he was sending him to his demise. The one time Spencer forced himself to say the words, "I don’t want you to go," Ryan scoffed and tied his shoes and said, "It’s not as bad as you seem to think it is."

"Maybe you should just stay here," he managed to say again, months and months later.

Spencer didn’t have to say ‘permanently’ for Ryan to know he meant permanently. Ryan rolled his eyes.

"I’m serious," Spencer said. "My parents would let you."

"Why?" Ryan asked.

"Because," Spencer said, and stuttered incoherently, "because I’m the best actor in your play." It was better than saying I’m all you have.

Ryan ignored him and went home. The reason he did it was the great mystery of their play. Spencer had no idea. Ryan loved a man who was ruining him and he couldn’t be bothered to explain why. Spencer watched him go and decided never to bring it up again. "Act Two," he said.

\----

The tech guys taped down the wires that ran from the microphone to the radio transmitter, but Brendon was so nervous that the tape wouldn't stick. His lower back was glistening wet.

"Gross," groaned Ryan. His pupils were wide. Spencer wondered if he'd taken something. Ryan's horror of drugs didn't always extend to pharmaceuticals.

"He's going to soak through his shirt," Spencer said, catching Ryan's eye.

Ryan laughed. "Poor Brendon," he said.

They stood backstage, just beyond the waterfall of the red velvet curtains. They were due on stage in five minutes. Spencer's kit was on its riser. Ryan's guitar was in the death grip of an anxious looking tech. Brendon held his top hat in his hands. He hadn't shut up since they'd left their seats in the audience. Jon was listening him with mock attention.

"Remember the Extravapalooza?" Ryan whispered.

"Of course," Spencer said. The year he was in seventh grade, Ryan had declared that they were doing to be in the talent show. Everyone and their brother had a band. Ryan decided they needed to come up with something more innovative. Spencer's mom helped them sew the costumes. Ryan insisted on neon tassels hanging from the sleeves. Spencer was skeptical, at first, but the rehearsals in the driveway went so well he was convinced.

"I don't think I'm any more nervous now than I was then," Ryan said.

"I've never been as scared as I was before we skated onto that stage," Spencer admitted.

Ryan gave him a wry half smile. The stripe of makeup across his eyes made it hard to look at him. "I told you it would be fine," he said.

"And I was dumb enough to believe you," Spencer said.

"You always do," Ryan said.

It was the truth. Spencer closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm glad we're here."

Ryan's eyes crinkled, but he said, "I am too."

There was a yelp. They both looked over. Brendon was jumping in a circle, rubbing his shoulder.

"That hurt, Jon Walker," he said.

Jon was grinning. "I was just helping, Brendon."

"Spencer," Brendon cried. "Jon hurt me."

Spencer walked over to inspect the wound. Jon had torn away one of the pieces of tape. There was a strip of red skin. "I think you'll live."

Brendon pouted. He was on fire. He bounced on the balls of his feet. The act on stage was ending. The crowd began to politely roar. Spencer's stomach did a flip. It hadn't seemed real until he heard the screams. His mother and his sisters and all of their friends were back at home in Nevada watching. They'd made videos, of course, but something about the idea of so many millions of people bearing witness to their band all at one time was utterly soothing. No one could deny they'd made it this far.

The PA gave them their cue. They filed past the smooth wall of curtain. The stage lights dimmed. Spencer looked back. Ryan stood right behind. They stopped for a moment. Spencer tried to think of something to say. Brendon sung a little song under his breath. Ryan watched with wide eyes. The curtains rustled. Spencer's jacket chaffed. He thought of reaching out, taking Ryan's hand, making some gesture, doing anything ...

Then they were being shoved forward into then dark microcosm of the stage and the moment was over and Spencer had said nothing.

\----

"I probably shouldn’t be telling you this," Spencer’s mother said to him on the phone. She paused. Spencer was on edge. They were in the very middle of an eleven-hour drive and boredom had gone beyond annoying and was pushing into a cause of mental instability. Jon was staring at the television so hard he hadn’t blinked in several minutes. Brendon might have been playing checkers with himself. Spencer was eating a small bowl of every type of breakfast cereal they had on the bus. Ryan had disappeared into his bunk. The air was palpable. When Ryan sneezed five minutes earlier everyone had jumped a foot.

Spencer couldn’t take the anticipation any longer. "You shouldn’t be telling me what?" he nearly yelled at her, a speck of cereal flinging from his lips.

She sighed gravely before answering him. "I saw him being taken out," she said.

When he closed his phone he sat it on the counter next to his bowl with absurd composure. He stared at his fingers and waited for them to shake but they refused to. His breathing slowed and his heart beat a steady rhythm. He felt that he was experiencing tragedy in entirely the wrong way, but at least he knew what he had to do.

No one paid any attention when he crossed the lounge and hoisted himself into Ryan’s bunk without warning. Ryan wasn’t doing anything scandalous, or anything at all, really, except listening to music and tapping his foot and chewing on his left thumbnail. Spencer took hold of both of Ryan’s wrists and forcibly pulled him until he was in Spencer’s lap and Spencer could wrap both arms around his friend tightly. The shuffle caused Ryan’s headphones to fall off and they played distorted sad songs in the distance, from atop his blanket. Spencer pressed his eyes to Ryan’s shoulder and did not speak.

Ryan made plenty of disapproving and confused noises; he tried to pull away and tried to look Spencer in the eyes but was unsuccessful at everything. "What’s the matter?" he said for the third time when he finally gave up and put a tentative hand against Spencer’s back. Ryan was sort of inexperienced at holding.

Spencer said nothing. Ryan resituated his legs into a more comfortable position and made another attempt at hugging him back. Through touch alone Spencer could feel Ryan was hugging him as though they were in a room full of cool people who never hugged and were judging Ryan on everything he did next. It was there, but it was clear he didn’t want to be doing it. "Talk to me," Ryan said, because he was better at talking than anything else, but Spencer did not talk. He held Ryan tighter.

"Spencer," Ryan said a minute later. "Did... something happen?" Spencer could hear him fit the pieces together in between his words. "Spencer?" he said again. Spencer moved his chin up a fraction of an inch; it was meant to be a nod, and Ryan heard him clearly. He dropped his arms so they lay slack at his sides.

A moment passed in which Spencer might have actually been helpful, been consoling and obviously loyal. He might have been doing the right thing. Then Ryan pushed him away. Spencer tried to hold on but Ryan got his feet involved, kicking Spencer in the gut and falling just short of breaking his ribs. Ryan catapulted himself to the opposite end of his bunk and sat up on his knees while he dialed numbers on his phone. Ryan’s fingers shook. He was experiencing tragedy in the way people were supposed to.

Ryan called the same number four times in a row in vain. Spencer could hear the answering machine pick up every time, after so many rings; the mechanical sound of his father instructing the caller to leave a message, the same thing that had been recorded for the past ten years. Every time, Ryan would curse and dial it again. After the fourth time Spencer said, "Stop," and Ryan did. He took a moment to breathe, and then dialed a different number.

Spencer heard his own mother pick up. "Was it you?" Ryan asked her.

"Ryan?" she said.

"What do you know?" he asked. "Why would you tell him first?"

"Sweetheart," she began, and would have said more, but he hung up on her. He threw the phone in Spencer’s direction and it landed next to his leg.

"I’m in the middle of nowhere," he said out loud. Spencer didn’t know if Ryan was talking to him, or to no one. "I’m trying to..." he said, "I have to work."

Spencer said nothing. Ryan turned his head to look at him. "Can you please go?" he asked.

"Go where?" Spencer asked. Ryan opened his mouth to answer but before he could get one syllable out, Spencer said, "No."

Ryan looked furious, like a wild animal that was caught and thrown into the circus and expected to perform tricks for an audience. He didn’t want to be seen and Spencer knew it, and he refused to stop looking at him. Ryan took a deep breath and stared straight ahead again. "I’m not going to have a fucking breakdown, if that’s what you think. I’m fine, I just want to go to sleep."

"So sleep," Spencer said.

"And don’t be fucking stupid enough to offer to cancel anything for me. What good would that do?" Ryan asked.

"Okay," Spencer said.

"Stop fucking staring at me!" Ryan yelled. Outside of the bunk, Spencer heard Brendon and Jon say, "Oooh," and turn the television’s volume up louder. "Do you want me to cry and clutch at you and thank you for being such a good fucking friend for always holding up poor pathetic me?"

Somewhere far away from the emotional part of Spencer’s brain, he knew Ryan didn’t mean anything he said, but his words still stung when they hit and made him rethink his plan, for just a second.

Ryan sighed and put a hand over one of his eyes, to rub at his eyebrow. "I don’t mean you’re a bad friend, I just mean..." he shook his head. "It doesn’t change anything. It’s not worth it to freak out."

"Fine," Spencer said.

"Just leave me alone," Ryan said. "Please. Thanks for letting me know, thanks for giving me a hug, whatever. I’m tired."

The culmination of Act Two was that moment, when Spencer had to decide whether to stay or go. He had to conjure up every second he had ever spent with Ryan and pick out every word his friend had ever said with his eyes, or his hands, or anything except through actual speech. He had to intrinsically know what was best for Ryan in spite of what Ryan said out loud. Spencer felt helpless; he had absolutely no idea what to do.

He moved his foot. Ryan took this to mean he was about to leave, so he crawled back over to Spencer and hugged him again, with the ability and aptitude of someone who did it all the time. Spencer held him back. "I’m sorry," he said.

"I’m sorry, too," Ryan replied. He put a hand in Spencer’s hair. "I’m sorry. I love you," he said. "And I loved him. Don’t tell anybody."

Spencer smiled a sad smile. "I wouldn’t dare."

Ryan pulled back. "Now leave."

\----

Somehow, they'd put Spencer in charge of the damn Moon Man. He held on to it in the din backstage. He held on to it like a lifeline while they stood in the press room under a siege of flashbulbs. He held on to it in the grand melee of the exodus from Radio City. It wasn't as heavy as he would have thought. It weighed no more than the trophy he'd gotten in eighth grade when his little league team made it into the state championship series. He kept trying to hand it off, but nobody wanted the thing. Finally, when they were safely stuffed into the limo, he dropped it unceremoniously on the seat between he and Jon.

"Hey, hey," Brendon exclaimed. "Treat the little dude with some respect." He picked it up and cradled it like a baby.

Ryan reached over and took it from him. "I can't believe we fucking won," he said. He sounded happy. He'd dry heaved twice after they got off stage, but since then he'd been grinning constantly. Spencer looked out the window. New York was an orange-mauve blur studded with jewels of light. It hadn't rained yet. He was still waiting.

"I can't believe you chose tonight to go through puberty, Bren," Jon said, but in a very kind way.

Brendon laughed. "Screw you, Walker. I was nervous as fuck. And hey, those costumes the dancers wore were terrifying. I wasn't expecting that shit. You're lucky you were up in your little drum kingdom, Spence. I thought they were going to stampede me."

"Thank God you made it out alive," Spencer said. He still surged with the thrill.

"Amen!" Brendon exclaimed. He grabbed a bottle of water from the recess in the door and chugged it, and then started to sing 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow', although nobody knew in whose honor. It was a cacophony. The limo stopped short at a red light and horns blared. They stood paused on the periphery of Time Square. The aura of all those millions of lights made the sky white. Everyone had fallen out of sync. They didn't sing the same words any longer. Spencer opened a water for himself. The first swallow tasted like plastic. He'd changed after the show but he wanted to shower.

Ryan said, "Where are we going?"

No one seemed to know. There was a party somewhere. That was how these things worked. Everything was a tenuous mystery. Spencer hated never knowing who was in charge. Brendon opened a tiny bottle of champagne he'd stolen from the performer's suite. It had been jostled in his pocket. The spray erupted. White suds ran down the windows like they were in an inside-out car wash.

"Idiot," yelled Ryan, wiping off his jacket with his scarf. Jon giggled. It was too much. Brendon had done the same thing at least five times before; cans of soda shaken and opened on the bus, in the van, in the studio.

Brendon was chugging the champagne. Spencer reached for the bottle and finished the rest in one swallow. The limo jerked stop once more. They'd arrived.

Fans lined the sidewalk, screaming themselves hoarse. When you won video of the year it apparently did not matter if most of your band was under age. They were escorted directly inside. Beyond the wall of glowering bouncers there was a swarm of actual celebrities. Spencer saw Puff Daddy and Britney in the first two minutes. He clung to Jon, who always kept his head in a crowd. The open bar was a siren. Jon bee-lined for it, Spencer at his back. He ordered a vodka and tonic. Spencer ordered the same. His knowledge of alcohol was unsophisticated thanks to Ryan's personal prohibition.

"Dude," said Jon. "This is so sweet. I seriously owe you guys. If you hadn’t taken pity on me I’d be sitting at home eating pot noodles and playing guitar for my cat."

"You saved our asses, Jon Walker," Spencer said.

Jon grinned. "Hey, you would have found someone else. I'm sure they wouldn't be even a quarter as cool as I am, but you'd have made do."

"The ability to tolerate both Brendon and Ryan is rare," Spencer said. "I don’t think anyone else would have been up to the task." He took a sip of his drink. It may have been the bubbles but it seemed to go directly to his head.

"Where are those goofballs?" Jon asked.

"Dunno," said Spencer.

Jon peered through the haze of lights. "I think I see Wentz over there. If I know Ryan Ross he's probably somewhere nearby."

They shoved off through the crowd. Any fire ordinances had been completely disregarded. It was nearly impossible to move on the floor. Spencer was glad he'd worn a tee shirt. It was stifling. Jon kept stopping and saying hello to people he'd never met. Kelly Clarkson cornered them near the ladies room and confessed she'd once listened to their album on repeat for eight hours straight. They escaped before she could ask for an introduction to Brendon.

They found Pete. They did not find Ryan. Pete hugged them both and kissed Spencer wetly on the cheek.

"My babies are all grown up," he said, delicately wiping a fake tear from his eye.

William Beckett was there. He greeted Jon like the old friend that he was. Spencer felt a little annoyed, a little alone. He’d never felt too comfortable with this Chicago crowd. William called Tom and put him on speaker phone. Jon shouted and laughed. Spencer knew Jon missed Tom badly, spoke to him on the phone often, and didn’t really feel that was any consolation. He tried to imagine what it would have been like if he'd succeeded without Ryan, or if Ryan had gone on without him. Such scenarios were impossible to envision. Ryan was always there. He was omnipresent in Spencer's past and present. A future without him was impossible. Spencer suddenly couldn’t breathe.

Pete was saying something foolish. Spencer said, "Excuse me." He started to walk away. Jon caught his eye. Spencer frowned. He mouthed Ryan's name. That must have been satisfactory. Jon have him a thumbs up. Spencer left.

Braced with another drink he braved the floor of the club once more. People congratulated him. People wanted to shake his hand. Spencer loathed each interruption, but he was polite and gracious. Ryan was nowhere to be found. If he'd left, Spencer would have to follow. He put no faith in the power of fate but maybe he'd had a revelation. If he called Ryan's cell phone, he could not be sure Ryan would pick up. Someone threw an arm around his neck and kissed him. Spencer jumped a foot from fright. It was Brendon. He was drunk.

"Spency," he said. "I am sooo glad to see you."

"Brendon, where did you go? Where's Ryan?" Spencer asked.

"Haven't seen him," Brendon said. "He's still mad 'cause of that champagne. Says I made him sticky. You got way more soaked, Spence, and you're not sticky, are you?"

Brendon reached up and mussed Spencer's hair, which had been sticky from the champagne earlier but had mostly dried into a tacky mess.

"Not so bad," Brendon said.

"When did you last see Ryan?" Spencer asked.

Brendon shrugged loosely. His head lolled. It was perhaps a bad idea to leave him alone. Right now Spencer could not care. There was a VIP area. Spencer didn't think he'd be allowed in, but nobody halted his progress. There was enough space to breathe behind the red velvet ropes. His lips were going numb. Waiters circulated bearing trays of green drinks in glass flutes. It seemed a marvel that they didn't spill. Spencer nabbed one in passing.

A crowd of a few people gathered in a corner. Spencer walked up. Ryan was sitting on a leather ottoman. His eyes were glazed.

"Hey," Ryan said. "What's going on Spencer?"

"I was looking for you," Spencer said.

"Here I am," said Ryan.

Spencer quaked. He couldn't say anything here, surrounded by these strangers. His glass was empty. He absurdly wanted more to drink. The club's walls were hung with printed silk. The effect was psychedelic. Spencer's shoes pinched his toes. He'd thought he'd stopped growing but he'd gone up a half a size the last time he'd bought sneakers.

"Can you believe tonight?" Ryan asked.

Spencer wasn't sure if he were talking to him. No one else said a word.

"Not really," he said. It was increasingly like a dream. "I have to talk to you, Ryan."

Ryan pursed his lips. "Now, Spence?"

"Yes," Spencer said. "Now." He knew more and more what he had to say.

"Not now," Ryan said. "Tomorrow."

"When are you going back to the hotel?" Spencer asked.

Ryan turned red. "Well, later ... But I don't think we're going to be able to ..."

Someone tapped Spencer on the shoulder. He turned his head and stepped aside. Slinking like a cat, Keltie slid past.

"Excuse me," she said.

She arranged herself in Ryan's lap. Ryan smoothed a hand over the flat of her stomach. She smiled at him and when she did her eyes went all narrow.

"Keltie and I were just heading out actually," Ryan said. They both tried to stand at once and nearly fell over each other. "We'll talk tomorrow, Spence."

He smiled and Keltie smiled and something in Spencer's gut felt suddenly rotten. They pushed through the crowd and then Spencer was alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Spencer leaned into the horn. The ancient Civic directly ahead of them rolled forward a painful six inches. They'd been riding the brakes for the last twenty miles. Spencer had never seen the traffic south into Vegas so bad this early in the season. The Civic slammed its brakes again; Spencer downshifted. The Jeep's transmission squealed. Manual robbed driving of all joy.

Ryan slid open his phone to check the time. It was to no avail. Traffic wasn't moving. They were still running late. Spencer couldn't stand the silence any longer. He shoved a CD into the slot on the dash and turned up the volume. The gas gauge was four fifths of the way to empty. They'd turned the air off a half an hour ago. Ryan peered into the mirror on the back of the sun visor and fussed with his hair. Sweat dripped down the middle of Spencer's back.

"Fuck," said Ryan.

Spencer said nothing. He was focused utterly on the road, on the blue Civic, on the Greyhound bus two cars ahead, on the give of the clutch and the gas pedal. They'd barely spoken since they left. Spencer couldn't remember the last time it had been just the two of them. The CD he'd put on skipped. He jumped to the next track; that skipped as well. He didn't bother changing it.

"How far are we?" Ryan asked.

"If there was no traffic, we'd be there in a half an hour," Spencer said.

Ryan rolled his window down jerkily. "Why is it so hot?" he asked.

"It's been worse than this," Spencer said. When Ryan was in tenth grade and Spencer was in ninth, they'd closed the schools the third week in May. The temperature had crawled up to one twenty in the afternoon. Senior citizens were rushed to the emergency room with heat stroke. Spencer and Ryan had fried an egg on the street and fed it to the neighbor's dog.

"I didn't forget," said Ryan. He was pressed awkwardly into the seat, his arms crossed. Suddenly he reached out to eject the CD. "I have a headache," was all he said.

The Jeep was overheating. Spencer was not surprised. The needle edged closer to the red. Jon often said he never knew how it had made the trip from Chicago without being reduced to scrap. They'd have to stop. Ryan would not be pleased. Spencer hit the blinker and pulled onto the shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Ryan cried.

"It's running hot," Spencer said.

Ryan kicked the dash. He left a dusty print. "You could have waited until we were off the highway," he said.

"It's three miles to the next exit," said Spencer. "I'm not going to make Jon's car explode."

"It would have made it that far," Ryan said.

Spencer snorted. "I don't really trust your automotive expertise."

"Fuck you," Ryan said.

"If you really think it will make it, you drive," said Spencer.

Ryan could not drive stick.

Spencer got out and got the jug of water Jon kept under the back seat. When he opened the hood, a cloud of noxious steam burst forth. Spencer gagged and held the hem of the shirt over his nose and mouth.

Ryan got out of the car, sat Indian style in the burnt grass, and made a phone call. Spencer watched out of the corner of his eye. Ryan bit his lip. He'd always done that when frustrated. He snapped his phone shut after a moment and pressed his palm against his forehead.

"The highway's closed," he said. "A tractor trailer jack-knifed. They won't send a taxi."

Spencer nearly laughed. Of course they weren't going to send a taxi. He pried the cap off the radiator. The stink made him gag. He poured in the entire gallon of tepid water. He wasn't sure if it would do any good. He'd never learned much about cars. He'd never really had occasion.

"I hope she's OK," Ryan said.

"Keltie is a grown woman," Spencer said. "She'll be fine waiting in the airport for a little while."

"This is fucked up," Ryan said.

"Calm down," Spencer said. "It's not that big of a deal."

"I know," said Ryan. "I'm just worried." His face softened. "I miss her, Spence."

Spencer grimaced, although Ryan could not see. He stared at the engine. That he'd had to be part of this trip was painful enough. Sentimentality was going to give him indigestion.

"I don't know why you don't like her," Ryan said. "She reminds me so much of you."

Spencer knew they had nothing in common whatsoever. "I hardly know her," he said.

"You don't try," said Ryan.

Spencer said nothing.

Ryan stood and put on his sunglasses.

"Is the car better?" he asked.

Spencer went around to the driver's side and tried to start it. The engine growled. Something hissed and popped.

"I would say no," he said.

Ryan started to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Spencer asked.

"I'm going to go find a gas station and call a cab."

"Don't be stupid," Spencer said.

"It's not far," Ryan said. "I don't want her to leave ..."

Spencer sighed. Heat danced over the blacktop. The sun was as big and white as a dinner plate. He rolled up the window on the driver's side.

"What are you doing?" Ryan asked.

Spencer locked the door and shut it. "I'm not going to let you go alone."

\-----

They had been working nonstop, on nearly a daily basis, for more than an entire year. Spencer had just barely begun to get used to it when, all of a sudden, early December was upon them. The band and the crew flew to their respective cities; they parted and piled alone into taxis or the passenger seats of loved one’s cars, and drove away. Spencer stayed at his family’s house. It was still his house, technically, despite that it did not feel like it, despite that he could probably afford to buy his own house by then.

He had stored his Moon Man in his carry-on bag, had wrapped it in a t-shirt and figured that was good enough. It was the first thing he unpacked when he attempted to settle into his old bedroom and become fanatically festive. His mother had already decorated every available surface in red and green and Santa hats. His bed sheets had snowflakes and reindeer on them. It had been that way, post-Thanksgiving until well into the new year, since he could remember. He sat the little statue next to a ceramic, star topped tree on his desk.

He felt someone enter the room behind him, quietly like they were trying to sneak in. Under normal circumstances he would have yelled about the rules of knocking before entering, but he didn’t have the heart. He kept his eyes on the statue.

"What is Ryan going to do for Christmas now?" Jackie asked him. She stood in the doorway and toed at the carpet on the other side.

"Um," Spencer answered, and for the very first time, considered it. Why had Ryan even gone back to Vegas? What was he going to do? "I have no idea," he said finally.

A week passed before Ryan called him. Spencer at once wanted to call Ryan every second and absolutely refused to. The latter half of his conscious was winning. When Ryan was the first to cave in, Spencer had nothing to say to him. They talked about the weather for three minutes; they talked about the band for two. Ryan mentioned Keltie; Spencer hummed a response. Then they spent more time than Spencer wanted to acknowledge in silence, wondering what to say. Eventually Ryan said he had to go, and Spencer said okay.

Two more weeks passed. It proved to be the longest time the two of them had gone without speaking to each other in the entire duration of their friendship. Ask his eight year old self, ask his sixteen year old self: two weeks without talking to Ryan would have been impossible before, but something had changed.

Without Spencer being involved, at all, Ryan somehow managed to find himself in the Smith family kitchen three hours before the famous, annual, Christmas-Eve-Eve dinner to which Ryan was always invited. Spencer had slept until two in the afternoon and walked in on Ryan baking cookies with his sisters and looking positively giddy about it. Spencer was still in his pajamas; every strand of his hair stuck in varying degrees to the left.

"Hi, Spencer," Ryan said.

Spencer poured himself a glass of water. "Hello," he said, and left the room.

An hour later Ryan tracked him down. Spencer wasn’t so hard to find; he had been holed up in his room, brooding on things not even he understood the full details of, for the entire month. That day was no exception. Ryan brought a peace offering in the form of a plate of fresh cookies.

"I’m sick of this shit," Ryan said and sucked frosting off his thumb. "Tell me what’s wrong."

"Nothing is wrong," Spencer said.

"Tell me," Ryan repeated, clearly enunciating every syllable, "what is wrong."

Spencer considered his options, and felt he chose the best of them. "Nothing."

Ryan stared at him, forgetting his cookie. Spencer had never touched them. "So you’re just not talking to me now," Ryan stated.

"I am talking to you, right now," Spencer replied. "What do you think this is, if not communication?"

Ryan glared. Spencer had to avert his eyes. He turned his attention to his phone and scrolled idly through names of people, most of whom he’d met on tour. They'd probably had already forgotten him.

Ryan stood and left without another word.

Some time later the sun had set and Spencer had never bothered to turn on a light. The cookies Ryan brought were going stale on his bed. He could hear him downstairs, laughing with everyone, making his sisters shriek when he flung food at them from across the room. He was happy, he was charming, he was perfectly balanced. He was having the time of his life.

Spencer had to stop. He took a deep breath and made his presence known downstairs. Always forgiving, no one acted like they had noticed he had been gone, just greeted him warmly. Ryan smiled at him, but said nothing. His father put a serving dish of stuffing in his hands and told him to help Ryan set the table.

When they crossed each other’s paths, back and forth, from the kitchen to the dining room, his sisters tried to intrude on his passive mood.

"You’re ... !" they would yell, and then stop when Ryan would give them a look or Spencer would tell them to shut up.

When he and Ryan passed each other again, Ryan said, "I'm going to-" and both sisters yelled, "You’re un-"

"Shut up!" Spencer said. He hadn’t meant to direct it at Ryan, but Ryan shut up, too. They walked away from each other.

When it happened the third time, a lot came out at once. "I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning," Ryan said at the same time the sisters yelled, "You’re under the mistletoe!" and burst into giggles for finally getting it out.

Spencer froze and Ryan froze and everything around them seemed to melt away. "Why?" Spencer finally spat out.

Ryan tried to look sympathetic and it infuriated Spencer even further because he knew it was forged. "To spend Christmas there, to walk in the snow and see the-"

"To see Keltie," Spencer answered for him.

His mother squeezed past them, holding a bowl of cranberry sauce. She was completely oblivious of the downfall of her son’s greatest friendship occurring directly in front of her, of the possible downfall of his entire life. "You’re under the mistletoe," she said.

Ryan blinked. "I just want to get away from here for a while. I think you should understand that. You of all people should know why." He shifted his weight and left a pause for Spencer to feel guilty. "I mean, what else would I do on Christmas? I have nowhere to go."

Ryan might as well have punched him in the face. Spencer wanted to say that, or maybe to actually punch Ryan in the face for insinuating he couldn’t stay with him whenever he needed to, no matter what time or what day or for what reason, but he kept his mouth closed. He was becoming remarkably good at not saying anything.

His sisters began to dance around and sing a carol. "You’re under the mistletoe," Crystal reminded them in between lyrics.

Ryan had the nerve to smile and lean toward Spencer, who was too overwhelmed to do anything but close his eyes. Everything in him didn’t want to let Ryan get away with kissing him. Stop him, his mind said, stop him before it’s too late.

Spencer caught Ryan’s face in his hands when Ryan’s lips were centimeters away. He opened his eyes again and leaned into Ryan’s ear. He spoke to him in a whisper, to be sure no one else could hear. "Don’t come to my house and pretend to be my friend and bake cookies with my sisters and then leave me for a girl whose only goal in life is to fuck guys that are good at playing guitar."

Ryan was in shock. Spencer was shocked he’d actually said it out loud. Neither of them moved for a moment, and he knew his sisters were watching them, so he kissed Ryan on the cheek for good measure. "Merry Christmas," he said.

They sat down to dinner. Ryan kept his eyes down and hardly spoke. When he left he didn’t say goodbye to Spencer. They didn’t see each other again for five months.

\----

Spencer wondered if he was going to die. He'd spent the last two hours walking down the the side of the freeway, taking a frantic taxi ride down side streets and state highways, and trailing Ryan while he ran through all of McCarran International. He was hungry, thirsty, and still hot. Unfortunately for him, Ryan and Keltie showed no signs of letting up.

They made it all the way to the taxi stand outside of baggage claim before Keltie even noticed Spencer was there. It wasn’t that she was unobservant, it was just that Ryan was blocking her vision of anything beyond one foot past her face. She called out to him and Spencer politely waved and then busied himself with informing the taxi driver the freeway was impossible to traverse, and that they had a long way to go. He didn’t care. Ryan and Keltie jumped into the backseat, laughing uproariously, and the driver followed them to the front seat. Spencer put Keltie’s bags in the trunk for her.

When he slid in next to Ryan, Ryan said, "What were you doing?"

He didn’t wait for an answer, not that Spencer would have given one anyway, but when they pulled away from the curb he looked at the sidewalk and wished he had left her bags there.

Keltie and Ryan decided they’d had enough of each other for another thirty seconds when the car was somewhere on the outskirts of town. It was long enough for Keltie to say, "Spencer, this is the first time we’ve really met. Isn’t that weird?"

Spencer thought about it. He didn’t believe her; they must have met sometime before. He had spent months alternately hating and then being indifferent towards her. He must know her, in some way. "The VMAs," he said.

"Yeah," she replied, "but we hardly spoke two words to each other then, and I don’t really remember you."

"Thank you," Spencer said, and she laughed.

"But I feel like I know you," she said. "I’ve heard so much about you from Ryan."

"Likewise," Spencer said, although that was a lie. Ryan and Spencer hadn't exactly been on speaking terms since before the New Year and already it was summer. But when Ryan did have to talk, he mostly talked about Keltie, and sometimes about the record they were trying to make, and beyond that, nothing. Three days ago Ryan informed him Keltie could make better pancakes than the ones Spencer made and threw in front of him, when the plate clattered loudly on the granite counter top. "I hear you make good pancakes," he offered.

Ryan sniffed and Keltie looked ecstatic about the compliment. "And I’ll make you some! I bet you haven’t eaten proper food in ages. It seems like you’ve all been gone forever."

Spencer counted the time in his head. "A few weeks? A month? It hasn’t been that long."

"Two months and counting," she said factually. "And I couldn’t take it anymore. I can’t stand when Ryan’s away from home."

Spencer couldn’t decide if he wanted to strangle her for insinuating she had ever experienced Ryan being gone before, or insinuating wherever she lived was his home. He wrung his hands and stared out the window and said nothing.

"I bet your girlfriend hates it, too," she said.

Spencer’s phone rang. He squinted at the screen. "Speak of the devil," he mumbled, infinitely grateful to be out of that conversation. "Hi, sweetheart," he answered it.

Ryan and Keltie had already forgotten he was in the car.

"Hi, baby," Brendon said. "So, you and Ryan drop off the face of the earth and then you call me by pet names? I can’t say I understand, but I’m cool with it."

"Jon was supposed to drive Ryan to pick up Keltie, but we couldn’t find either of you," Spencer explained."We had to steal his car before Ryan hyperventilated."

"Wait a minute," Brendon said, "you’re in a car, alone, with Ryan and Keltie right now? That’s fucking hilarious."

"Yes, and you are going to keep me company until we’re back, I can’t st-"

"No way," Brendon cut him off. "I’m leaving you to it. You need this experience, Spence. It’ll be good for you in the end."

"I will literally torture you to death when we get back if you hang up on me right now," Spencer said as gravely as he possibly could, but it was to no avail. Brendon laughed and the line was cut off.

"Hey, Spencer," Ryan said, turning toward him. "You’ll go back later and pick up Jon’s car, won’t you?"

Spencer stared at him.

"It’s not that far out," Ryan added. "Half an hour, or something. The traffic will probably be better tonight."

"Probably," Spencer repeated.

"So, Ryan," Keltie said, "is it, like, a real cabin? I know you told me about it a million times, but..."

Spencer tuned them out. He twisted as far as he could towards the door and rested his elbow on the handle. He was sore from the walk. He couldn't get comfortable. He tried to keep himself occupied. The landscape was barren. Spencer counted twenty three gleaming swimming pools before the houses grew smaller and shabbier and they left the city. Ryan was holding Keltie's hand. Spencer couldn't watch. He closed his eyes. He felt his phone buzzing in his lap. He didn't answer. He fell asleep with his head against the window.

When they reached the cabin, Ryan shook him awake.

"Hey," he said softly. "We're back."

Spencer blinked, disoriented. He mumbled something indistinct. Ryan gave him a tight smile and shut the door. The seat belt was digging into Spencer's side. He undid it and got out of the car. His feet were all pins and needles. He rolled his shoulders. Ryan was struggling with Keltie's luggage. Spencer helped him with the most massive of her suitcases. Ryan said thank you. Spencer said nothing.

The taxi took Spencer back to Jon's car. The traffic was still heavy. Spencer sat in the back seat and closed his eyes. He was glad to be alone. The local Spanish language talk radio station droned on and on, interrupted by squeals of static when they passed under high tension wires. He had taken Spanish all four years in high school, but they spoke too quickly and it was all unintelligible. Nothing seemed to make sense. His entire life was a jumble. He was tired of always feeling angry and dejected and he was tired of no one else understanding why. He was tired of being the only one who cared that his friendship with Ryan was apparently over. He'd spent fourteen and a half years trying to be there for a person who left him, easily, for a girl. Ryan had somehow missed the lesson that abandoning your best friend for a girl was number one worst, most disloyal thing a person could do.

Maybe Keltie was worth it. Spencer knew he was basically an average person. Maybe Keltie was just that great, so great that her companionship would be worth losing the friendship of ten Spencers. Spencer didn't know. He barely knew her, although he did hate her sometimes, so much it made him shake. But nothing about her suggested she was anything other than pretty and ordinary. He could rationalize losing Ryan to some kind of savant, maybe an Ivy League educated new media artist who did charity work in Sudan and won a MacArthur grant at age twenty three. But Keltie was bland, a cookie cutter copy of a hundred and ten other girls Ryan could date if he wanted. Their love -- and it made Spencer's heart hurt to call it that -- was absolutely run of the mill. Keltie could be happy with anyone. Spencer would never be happy without Ryan.

It took Spencer two hours to drive back to the cabin. The Jeep kept overheating and Spencer had to pull over and let the engine cool down. During these forced rest stops he kept envisioning Keltie, happy with another man -- any other man. He thought of all his friends and cursed himself for not knowing more eligible bachelors. She needed to realize that there were other options out there, people less temperamental than Ryan, less inclined to bouts of silence, less clingy. She needed to realize that Ryan was too much work. Spencer needed to show her that she could have her pick of men.

By the time he got back to the cabin, everyone was eating dinner together in the dining room. Jon had saved him a plate and patted an empty seat next to his, but Spencer sat next to Keltie instead. Everyone except Ryan pretended this wasn’t strange.

"I’ve been thinking about what you said, Ryan," Spencer announced through a mouthful of dinner.

Ryan looked worried. "What did I say?" he asked.

"You said I should get to know Keltie, and you’re right. You’re my best friend," he pointed to Keltie, "and you’re my best friend’s girlfriend, and I don’t see why the three of us shouldn’t be a triangle..." he paused to take a sip of water, "- of friendship."

Keltie laughed, and this seemed to put Ryan at ease. "You're right, Spencer."

"Keltie," Spencer put his hand on his heart, "I solemnly swear not to let you fall asleep tonight until we’re the best of friends."

Ryan frowned. "Tonight?" Obviously he had other plans in mind for the first night he’d seen his girlfriend in two months.

"That’s right, tonight," Spencer smiled. "I don’t want to waste another minute, I’m serious about this." He dropped his fork and widened his eyes and pretend like this thought just occurred to him. "We should go up to the roof! Let’s light the torches and go up on the roof. Did they show you the roof, yet?" he asked Keltie.

"No..." she said. "They gave me a tour, but..."

"The roof is great; you have to see it," Spencer assured her.

"You can see across the whole forest," Brendon said helpfully. He hadn’t heard a word of Spencer’s plan, but he had apparently picked up on Spencer’s passion to get Keltie on the roof.

"It sounds beautiful," she said. "I can't wait."

\----

The night before they left for Maryland, Ryan slept over. Spencer had been packed for days. He'd gone over the directions they'd gotten from Pete eight times. He was so nervous he couldn't touch his dinner and every time his mother looked at him she teared up. Ryan's dad dropped him off at eight. He left his bulging duffel bag in the living room, Spencer's dad excused him from the table, and they ran upstairs. Spencer's bedroom was immaculate. He'd helped his mom clean and box up a bunch of his stuff. It was weird, because he was coming back -- they were only in the studio for six weeks -- but it felt permanent somehow, like this would never quite be home again, not like it had been.

He and Ryan played Super Smash Bros. for a little while, but it was hard to concentrate. Spencer's mom brought them up mugs of hot chocolate with big marshmallows floating in it. Instead of leaving she stood in the doorway.

"You think you're going to get any sleep tonight, guys?" she asked.

Ryan smiled. He'd always loved Spencer's mom. "I haven't slept in a week," he said. "Well okay, maybe a little. But not like, through the night."

"It's a good thing Brendon's driving tomorrow, then," she said. "I'm nervous enough about you driving all that way."

"We'll be fine, Mom," Spencer said. Still, he was secretly pleased at her concern.

"You'll end up living off Easy Mac if I know you," she said. She pursed her lips. "I'll have to see if I can ship some casseroles overnight ..."

"We don't need casseroles!" Spencer cried.

At the same time, Ryan said, "Your green bean and tuna is like my favorite ever."

Spencer's mom laughed."I'll give you the recipe in the morning, Ry."

Spencer snorted. "Remember last time Ryan tried to make cupcakes? We never got the burnt batter off the pan. I think I'll be in charge of the cooking."

Ryan elbowed him in the side."They were half your cupcakes, too, dude. And I didn't see you complaining when we ate them."

"Whatever," Spencer said, rolling his eyes. "Who's gonna say no to a cupcake?"

"Neither of you two," his mom said. "I want you guys to try to sleep soon, okay?"

"Okay, mom," Spencer said.

"Really," she said.

"Okaaaay," Spencer said.

Spencer's mom smiled. "Goodnight boys," she said, as she shut the bedroom door.

"I'm gonna miss your mom," Ryan said. He had a faint hot chocolate mustache.

"Yeah," Spencer said. "But we'll be home soon."

"It won't be the same," Ryan said.

"You don't think so?" Spencer asked. He went to his dresser and pulled out a pair of pajama pants.

"I hope not," Ryan said. "If everything's the same after all this, I don't know what I'm going to do."

Spencer went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and get changed. He'd brushed his teeth in front of the same mirror and spit into the same sink for his entire life. He knew every ding in the tile, every detail of the floral wallpaper. Nothing would change. He would come back, they'd have made a record, and this would all be the same. He was sure of it.

Back in his bedroom, Ryan had changed too. He kept a set of pajamas in Spencer's closet. Sometimes Ryan slept in the trundle bed, but he'd lately gotten too tall for it, and his feet hung off the end. Spencer's bed was big enough that they could share. He got an extra pillow and blanket from the closet in the hall. Ryan didn't like to sleep in the perfect dark, so Spencer left his desk light on, but angled it down. His room was strange and foreign. His mom had made him take all his posters down.

Spencer slept near the window, Ryan slept near the door. They laid side by side for a while, shifting, settling in to sleep, but it was impossible. Spencer didn't want to fall asleep. He wasn't ready for the morning.

"Do you really think this is going to change everything?" he asked quietly.

He felt Ryan move. "Yes," Ryan said. "It has to."

"It's not going to change us," Spencer said. He was sure of that.

"No," Ryan said. "But it'll make things better."

"What?" Spencer asked. "What is it going to make better?"

"It'll make things easier," Ryan said. "People will listen to us, and come to see our shows. We'll have money for new equipment and like, anything we want. We won't have to play before Nasty Cacti at the bowling alley any more." He rolled onto his side. His hair fell in his face. Spencer could hardly see him.

"Yeah," Spencer said. "You're right." But Spencer didn't really believe him. None of that really mattered. Nothing would ever be as easy or good as this was.

Ryan didn't say anything, but his eyes were open. Spencer felt hot beneath the blankets. He counted to ten, then on to twenty. He was no nearer sleep. He closed his eyes. He thought of the morning, corn flakes sprinkled with sugar at the kitchen table, his parents' tears, the still of the highway at dawn. Everything after that was a dream.

"Ryan," he said, hush. "Ryan, it's not going to change us, right?"

He waited, but Ryan didn't answer. He'd fallen asleep.

\----

The night had gone cool. The sky was split open, spilling tiny white stars like seeds. It was never like this in Vegas. The fug of the strip kept any true dark at bay. Everything was on timers there. Here Spencer wondered if it would ever be day again.

Jon had gone inside. Brendon lay on a lounger wearing big purple-framed sunglasses and an oversize sweatshirt. Ryan stood in the corner, a massive scarf thrown around his neck, his arms crossed. There had been other people, earlier, but they were gone now. It was late. Spencer knew it, but he didn’t feel it. He felt alive still, and eager. He was not yet very drunk, but he was happy.

"... And then Ryan suggested that we hide it in the vegetable drawer," he said, grinning, speaking just a little too quickly.

"Oh, no!" Keltie said.

Spencer nodded. His body felt loose, loopy. His eyes rolled in their sockets.

"Your parents didn’t find it for a week," Ryan said, smug, but his eyes looked heavy and the skin beneath them looked bruised. "Although your mom was pretty pissed she’d cooked broccoli we used to hide a dead bird."

Keltie laughed and laughed. Goosebumps made all the hair stand up on her arms. Spencer knew that because they sat side by side on the other lounger. Keltie wore a white dress, which, when she stood, hung diaphanous and filmy to mid thigh. Her hand was wrapped around a half empty bottle of Bud Light Lime -- nasty stuff. Spencer'd had one sip and spit it out. She liked it, though. It was all she'd been drinking. Spencer knew because each time she needed a drink he had volunteered to get it.

"It's so amazing you guys are still friends," Keltie said, running her thumb around the mouth of her bottle. "I haven't talked to my best friend from high school since we graduated."

Spencer rubbed his forehead with the back of his head. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, we're lucky. It was like fate or something I saw Ryan golfing in his front yard that day."

"Awww," she said. "That is too cute. Honey, why didn't you ever tell me that story before? You always tell the weirdest stories."

"I don't know," Ryan said. He blinked, slowly. He'd disappeared forty minutes ago with Jon and returned alone and redolent of must and pot.

Keltie flung off her little strappy sandals. Her feet were short and thin, her toenails pained dove gray. She stood ... and her legs couldn't hold her. She sat back down, heavy.

"Baby, come carry me," she said.

Ryan stared. "Okay," he said. He wrapped an arm around her waist. She held out her arms. "No," she said. "I mean carry me." Ryan put an arm under her knees and tried to lift her. He staggered back a step, and dropped her.

Keltie huffed. "You're no good, Ry. I'll have to stay here all night."

"We can have a camp out," Brendon said. "Dude, we can roast marshmallows."

Spencer started. He'd thought Brendon was asleep.

"I'm not sleeping out here," Ryan said. "There are mosquitoes." They'd lit the torches, which gave off copious clouds of black smoke but did nothing to keep the bugs away.

"Don't be a spoilsport," Keltie said, shaking her head. She wore earrings that dangled to her shoulders and jingled when she moved.

"I get welts," Ryan said.

He sounded wretched. Something in Spencer's chest twisted. Ryan did get welts, horrible huge red ones that itched. Mosquitoes seemed to think he was fillet mignon. The first time they toured in the Philippines Ryan ended up spotted like a Dalmatian. He locked himself in the bathroom, bathed himself in calamine lotion, and spent the rest of the trip smelling like an infirmary.

"Don't be a fag," Spencer said.

Keltie giggled and jabbed Spencer in the side. "That's not nice," she said.

"Am I going to have to wash your mouth out with soap, Mr. Smith?" Brendon asked, sitting up, his hair a wild mess.

"Sorry," Spencer said. "Sorry."

Ryan's mouth twisted.

Brendon got to his feet and kicked over a half full bottle. The suds washed over the deck, soaking the toes of Ryan's shoes.

"Oh shit," Brendon said. "What a klutz!"

"These are calfskin!" Ryan said. He started unlacing them furiously.

Keltie went over to help him, swaying. "We'll clean them, baby," she said. She took the shoes from Ryan and kissed him on the cheek. "Look, they're fine. They're hardly wet."

"Yeah," Brendon said. "It's only Bud Light anyway. It's practically water."

Ryan gave Brendon an evil look.

"He's trying to melt my brain with his laser beam eyes," Brendon said, jumping into Spencer's lap. "Save me!"

Spencer grunted and shoved Brendon aside. "Don't give Brendon the death stare," he said.

"He ruined my shoes!" Ryan said.

"I didn't mean it!" Brendon said. He tugged up the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled the drawstrings tight so that only the bottom half of his sunglasses and his nose showed. "Oh man."

Ryan took his shoes back from Keltie and stared at them sadly. "I'm going to bed," he said.

"Oh, no," Keltie said. "Stay up for a while, baby. I'm not tired yet."

Ryan shrugged. "Whatever," he said, and he turned and opened the sliding glass door and went inside.

They sat there for a moment. Spencer drained his beer. Then Brendon threw an arm around Spencer's shoulder.

"So what do you want to do now, guys?" he asked. He still had the hood drawn tight, and his voice was muffled.

Keltie laughed. "Oh, Brendon. You made Ryan so mad."

"He's still angry from this morning," Spencer said. "He doesn't like ... It's hard for him when things are out of his control. And he was nervous about you coming."

"My poor baby," Keltie said.

"He'll get over it," Brendon said. "Let's do something fun."

Brendon got whiny when he was drunk and tired. Spencer wasn't really in the mood.

"What do you want to do?" Keltie asked.

"I don't know," Brendon said. "I don't know!" He hollered. His voice echoed in the night. The dogs in the house down the road barked. Something down in the yard scuttled through the brush.

"What was that?" Keltie asked.

"Maybe a chupacabra," Brendon said.

"Dumbass," Spencer said. "It was probably a rattlesnake."

"Scary," Keltie said.

"You want to watch Robin Hood?" Brendon asked.

"The Mel Brooks one?" Spencer asked.

"No, man. Disney!" said Brendon. "I love that snake dude -- Hiss. He was awesome." Brendon made a few hissing noises and rocked back and forth.

Spencer sighed. "Go put it on," he said. "I'll come in later. It's nice out here."

"Okay," Brendon said. He whistled the theme from the movie. "I'm totally going to make popcorn. Cinnamon sugar popcorn!"

Keltie clutched her stomach. "That sounds so gross," she said.

"Be careful this time," Spencer said. "Remember, hot oil splatters. And keep the dish towels away from the burner."

"I know, Spence!" Brendon said. "That was one time, seriously. We all make mistakes."

"We don't all set the kitchen on fire," Spencer said.

Brendon rolled his eyes. He jumped up, loosened the hood of the sweatshirt. "Keltie, race me inside?"

"I'll be in in a minute, Bren," she said. "I want to see a shooting star."

An electric charge ran up Spencer's spine.

Brendon rolled his eyes. "Okay, nature lovers. Be that way."

They were alone, then, and it was quiet. Keltie lay on the ground, her hands behind her head, her legs bent at the knee, her dressed bunched near the nexus of thigh and hip. Cicadas sounded. Nothing reminded Spencer so much of home as that nighttime chorus.

"Do you know what you'll wish for?" he asked.

"What?" Keltie asked.

"When you see your shooting star," Spencer explained. "Do you know what you're going to wish for?"

"Oh," she said. "I didn't even think. I just wanted to stay out here a little longer."

Then she was silent. Her eyes were closed. Spencer guessed she'd fall asleep. He would carry her inside -- she was small with delicate hands and feet and it would not be hard -- and deposit her in the soft of Ryan's bed. He would deliver her to Ryan. Maybe he'd already done that. It was easy to over-think things out here, because the night was unchanging. There was nothing Spencer could do to drive them apart. He could learn to be happy. There would be a hole in his heart but he would still be able to watch movies with Brendon, still feel the rush of performing, still be friends with Ryan. That would be something. Maybe it would be enough.

"What would you wish for?" Keltie asked.

She hadn't opened her eyes. She might still be asleep. Spencer might be asleep himself. The wind gusted. All the needles on all the pine trees shook. The dogs down the street barked again. There were coyotes. Sometimes Hobo caught the scent of one and sat in front of the door baying for hours.

"Well?"

Spencer frowned. "I would wish ... I would wish for a second chance."

Keltie sat up. Her stomach was flat and perfect. "With Christina?" she asked. "Ryan told me about her."

"Yeah."

"What happened?" Keltie asked.

Spencer shrugged. He stood. His feet had fallen asleep. He leaned against the railing. "It just didn't work out."

"But why?" Keltie asked. "I don't mean to pry, but from what Ryan said it seemed like you really liked her."

Christina had been a two month blip on his radar, a sweet girl, a good time, and nothing more. "I guess she just didn't really like me," he said. "I don't have great luck with girls."

"What do you mean?" Keltie asked.

"That's what I mean," he said. "Girls just don't like me that much." He closed his eyes tightly. This was going somewhere else. It would be easier to head inside now, to get a blanket from the closet and sit on the couch with Brendon and fall asleep in front of a flickering television. Instead he walked to the cooler and pulled another bottle of beer from the slush of ice water.

"Don't lie," she said.

"I'm not lying!"

Keltie shook her head. "False modesty doesn't suit you," she said. She came and joined him at the railing. "You're a rock star!"

"Surprisingly, that doesn't seem to impress them too much," he said.

Keltie shook her head. "I don't know what girls you've been talking to, but let me tell you." She leaned conspiratorially close. "If I had passed Ryan on the street, I wouldn't have given him a second look."

"Don't tell me that," Spencer said. "I don't want to know that." He felt a sudden rush of hatred, wanted to shake her and make her realize how little she deserved him.

Yet she was warm and pliant, leaning into his shoulder. "I know he's your friend and all, but come on! He's like the king of awkward."

Spencer took a sip of his beer. The mountains, not so distant here, were darker than the night sky. He'd gone on a camping retreat there one year with school. At the time, the heat and the rocks and the dirt had been akin to torture. Now he understood the allure of so many square miles of wilderness.

"I made you mad," Keltie said. Her voice was hushed.

"No," Spencer said. "I was just thinking."

She leaned over to look at him. She had to stand on tip toes to meet his gaze.

"I could set you up on a blind date with the hottest girl you've ever seen," she said.

"Oh god, please don't. I don't want to a pity date."

"It won't be a pity date!" she said. "You're young, you're famous, you're hot. Guys like you aren't exactly growing on trees."

"Please," Spencer said.

"I'm serious," Keltie said. "I remember when I met you at the VMAs ... You looked like you were sixteen, seriously. I didn't even recognize you at the airport. You've grown up a lot."

"That was nine months ago," Spencer said.

"Nine months is a long time," Keltie said.

"I think I should be flattered right now," Spencer said. The torch flame flickered sultry and gold.

Keltie smiled. "Probably yes," she said.

This was one of those moments when the world spun. Spencer closed his eyes. It was like the throw of a dice; once he committed everything was out of his control.

He leaned forward and kissed her.

\-----

Brendon clapped him on the shoulder. "Dude, when you’re famous, you don’t need to have standards," he said.

Spencer suspected he was parroting something he’d heard Pete or someone say. Before he started hanging out with Spencer and Brent and Ryan, Brendon had been scared to drink caffeinated soda.

Brendon waved his arm. "You need some rock star lessons, Mr. Smith," he said.

Spencer looked scornful.

"For real," Brendon said. "Next time there’s chicks around after a show I’m picking one out for you. If you go up and act like your naturally charming self I bet you totally end up hooking up."

They were at the pool, and in his dreams Spencer was underwater all over again. Brendon pushed him in and walked away with a smile on his face. Spencer watched him from beneath the surface, watched him cross the room and exit through the doors that led to the hotel lobby. The image was blurred and wavering and tinged in chlorine green. Spencer sat on the bottom of the pool, incapable of floating, feeling weighed down by something other than merely himself. There was a sound of relentless tapping, the swish of paper on paper, a shuffling of something. It merged in his ears with the sound of water, hollow and in motion.

He realized too late he couldn’t breathe. He pushed up with his feet from the bottom. His toes scraped on the concrete, on the part of hotel pools not worth lining in tile. Ryan was sitting on the pool chair on the sidelines, nonchalant and wearing Spencer’s clothes. The same clothes Spencer had worn to that party, the same ones he had haphazardly thrown back on in Taran’s room after they were finished.

Ryan had a deck of cards, most of them in a stack in his hand but some of them spread out on the chair around his legs. Spencer wanted to ask what he was doing but he couldn’t will his vocal cords to participate. Ryan read his mind anyway, without even looking up, and answered the question.

"I was going to play solitaire, but we could play a game if you want."

"I don't really know any card games," Spencer replied automatically, but that was a lie, and he had no idea why he was lying.

"What about war? Can you play war?" Ryan still wouldn’t look at him.

Spencer swam over to the edge of the pool and held on to the lip. He looked down at his lower body, clothed in Ryan’s swimming trunks, and at his bare legs suspended in the water."I don’t want to play cards, Ryan," he said. It was more difficult to tell the truth, more difficult to say anything at all, but he forced himself, his throat dry and sore.

"I don’t want to swim, Spencer," Ryan retorted. He gathered the cards up in one quick motion so they were in a neat pile and then hid them away beneath the chair.

"You’re the one who wanted to come in here," Spencer accused.

"Because I wanted to see you."

"Because you wanted to kiss me." Spencer stared at him until he looked back.

Ryan appeared to be bored. "It was nothing."

"No, it wasn’t," Spencer fought back.

"I was drunk," Ryan said.

"You didn’t drink anything that night." Tonight. He should have said tonight, but he didn’t bother to correct himself.

Ryan said nothing.

"I always blame Keltie, I always blame that night, that exact moment she tripped you and you noticed her for the first time. I thought that was when we changed. Or when we ended, maybe. But it wasn’t then, and it wasn’t her. It was this night, at the pool. It was me."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "What makes you say that?"

"I was mean to you." Realization came crashing down on him. He could hear his heart beating faster under water. "I’d never been mean to you, anything more than superficially, until the night you tried to kiss me and I stopped you and said you couldn’t because you always ruin everything. Why did I say that?"

Ryan shrugged. He reached to grab at the pile of cards and then stood and walked slowly until his toes were at Spencer’s fingertips. He sat down to look at Spencer closer. Spencer’s jeans on Ryan’s body soaked up to the knee when he put his legs in the water.

"I’m sorry," Spencer told him. "It was a strange day. A bad day. I was tired, and Brendon introduced me to this... girl..." His words trailed away as Ryan began deliberately throwing the cards, one at a time, into the water. They landed all around Spencer’s head and floated on the surface. Spencer tried to ignore it. He swallowed hard. "I don’t know... I didn’t know... sometimes people say things they don’t mean and they don’t realize how much it hurts other people until it’s too late."

Ryan gave up on the cards halfway through the deck and dropped what was left all at once into the pool. They splashed and disappeared and Ryan leaned down to kiss Spencer all over again. Spencer closed his eyes and didn’t protest, he didn’t stop Ryan and he kissed back because that was what Ryan needed him to do.

Ryan pulled away first, and Spencer kept his eyes closed. There was something, another idea, on the tip of his tongue, on the edge of his mind, but he hadn’t taken the time yet to understand it at all. Ryan brought his legs out of the pool, presumably to leave, but Spencer grabbed at his wrists blindly, his eyes shut tight. "Ryan," he said, but didn’t know what to continue with.

"You’ve still got it all wrong," Ryan told him. His voice had a trace of humor in it. Spencer could hear the smile on Ryan’s lips when he couldn’t see it. "Spencer," Ryan went on, "open your fucking eyes."

\----

Spencer’s bedroom felt like a thousand degrees and humid, like it had rained inside and then been shut up for a hundred years. He could feel the weight of the air though it hardly compared to the glare of blinding white in his eyes. When he woke up he was staring directly at the sun in his window, so he had to shut his eyes again and roll over. When he tried again, carefully this time, there was pale blond instead of white, Keltie’s fingers next to Spencer’s bare arm, her eyelashes on her cheeks.

"Tell him you got drunk and fell asleep on the roof." The last words Spencer had said before he fell asleep that night rang through his mind again. She had agreed. Now the sun made him nervous. If it was so bright, it might be high in the sky. They might have slept in too late; they might be close to getting caught. Spencer mumbled something in his state of half-sleep that ended with "fuck," and Keltie began to stir.

Her hand went to her head and she frowned and tried to cover her eyes."Don’t you have curtains?" she whispered, and rolled off the bed.

Spencer reached for his clothes while she gathered her things on the other side. They kept their heads down. Spencer wanted to say something to her, he wanted to explain he doesn’t always sleep with girls for no apparent reason. He wished he could explain his reasoning, the unapparent motivation behind his actions, but it wouldn’t make a difference to her. He felt like he had insulted her, like he was transparent and she could see exactly what he'd done. He felt like he’d stolen something from her. He felt terrible.

And then she gasped and cursed and froze and Spencer’s heart stopped. He looked sidelong at her, and followed her eyes to across the room. He looked up through his hair and met Ryan’s gaze. He sat idly in a chair he had brought up all the way from the dining room. His arms were crossed; he seemed to have been camped out in Spencer’s room, waiting for Keltie and Spencer to wake up, for quite some time.

Spencer’s heart broke for the first of several times as that day progressed. Ryan finding out was definitely not a part of Spencer’s plan. All he wanted was to show Keltie she had other options; that other people could fill whatever shallow demands she asked of Ryan. He hated himself for it, but he didn’t hate himself as much as Ryan apparently did, staring him down from his chair.

Keltie recovered from the initial shock first and stormed out of the room. She said something else when she passed through the doorway, but Spencer couldn’t make sense of it. Ryan made no move to follow her, which worried Spencer even more. Ryan was going to yell at one of them, maybe hate one of them forever, and he chose Spencer.

They stared at one another for a long time, for too long. Spencer couldn’t speak, and Ryan wouldn’t speak. Finally he stood up and Spencer knew he was supposed to follow behind.

Brendon and Jon were both waiting for them in the hallway. Spencer looked at Brendon, hoping he would provide some kind of comic relief, a joke, a shrug, anything at all. But Brendon said nothing. He shook his head, a little disappointed, and looked away from Spencer. It made the situation feel even worse. They all followed Ryan, single file, to the studio. Keltie was nowhere to be found.

"I was trying to have an impromptu band meeting," Ryan said aloud when they had reached their destination. "I came looking for you."

Spencer swallowed air. Ryan leaned against the mixing console and crossed his arms again. His elbow was near the screen of one of the laptop computers they had been using to save tracks.

"I decided while I was still asleep I hate the songs we’ve done," Ryan announced. "I guess it was a dream that told me."

"Ryan," Spencer blurted out, interrupting his unnervingly calm façade. "We have to... why won’t you say anything?"

Ryan considered Spencer’s words and then blinked and looked at Brendon instead. "All of them," he continued.

Jon and Brendon stood awkwardly aside. Brendon was looking at his own toes. Jon cleared his throat. "What do you want to change?" Jon asked.

"All of it," Ryan answered easily. "So, I woke up at five in the morning and rushed down here and started deleting things."

Brendon’s head snapped back up to attention. "Ryan!" Jon scolded.

"Not everything," Ryan explained. "I deleted everything except for the master tracks on this computer." He pointed. "Then I decided before I went through with it, I should talk to you guys first. And when I got to Spencer’s room, I remembered Keltie wasn’t there when I woke up. Actually, she wasn’t anywhere. I hadn’t noticed before because I was so worried about the music, and I hadn’t had any coffee yet, but it finally hit me."

Everyone looked at Spencer. He felt weak, like his legs might give out at any moment. He desperately wished he knew the right thing to say, but he feared there was nothing Ryan really wanted to hear.

"Ryan," Brendon pleaded. He spoke softer than usual. "You can’t delete our songs for revenge against Spencer. We all worked on it."

"I’m not," Ryan said, shifting his weight and for the first time looking vaguely guilty. "I was going to delete them anyway."

Jon scoffed.

"Or at least I was going to talk to you about it before I did it. Now I have no respect for any of you."

"Oh, thank you," Brendon said, thick with sarcasm.

"I don’t really feel part of this band anymore," Ryan said. "We aren’t a team, so I’m taking everything I wrote and I’m doing whatever the fuck I want with it." Ryan began forcefully unplugging wires from the computer, then he snapped the screen down and lugged it under his arm.

While he walked across the room, towards the front doors, the other three watched him go. Ryan stopped for half of a second and looked into Spencer’s eyes. "Anything you want to say?" he asked.

Spencer said nothing. Ryan nodded, like he already knew Spencer would say nothing, and left. He slammed the door behind him. Spencer’s heart broke again.

They stood in silence for a while. No one dared move. Spencer wondered if Ryan would come back. He wondered if anyone would tell him what he deserved to hear; that he was a disloyal, untrustworthy, worthless friend who didn’t deserve all the relative success he’d enjoyed thus far. He wondered if that morning would prove to be the last time he ever saw Ryan for the rest of his life.

He felt like he had died, and his body was betraying him by still standing up. He could feel Brendon’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t meet them. He stared at the floor.

Jon sighed eventually. "I’ll go talk to him. I’ll try to find him before he gets lost in the woods."

When the door clicked behind Jon, Brendon spoke. "I thought I told you already not to break up the fucking band."

"I wasn’t trying to break up the band," Spencer said, "I was..."

"Trying to make Ryan jealous." Brendon finished for him. "Could you for one minute stop being so selfish?"

"I was not trying to make Ryan jealous," Spencer assured. "I was just..."

"Trying to ruin Ryan’s life?" Brendon asked.

"Keltie is not Ryan’s life," Spencer snapped. He realized only then he had a nearly crippling headache. He wanted to sit down, or to pass out. He stumbled backwards to lean against the console and put his head in his hands.

"No shit, but you are."

Spencer glared at his shoes."I’m not, either."

Brendon sighed. "So, is there any particular reason you slept with Ryan’s girlfriend after she’d been here about five hours?"

"It was more than five hours," Spencer muttered. "And no. Or yes. I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Brendon made a face.

"I didn’t plan on him finding out," Spencer added.

"Even if he was deaf and blind he would have found out within twelve hours," Brendon said. "We’re completely isolated up here. We all know what’s going on with everyone else, all of the time. There’s nothing to notice but each other."

Spencer sank lower to the ground. "So I’m an idiot."

"You are remarkably stupid," Brendon agreed. "But if you make my band a one-record wonder, I will never forgive you."

Spencer shook his head. "I’ll talk to him. Not right now."

"Not right now," Brendon seconded.

"But soon, and I’ll fix it."

"How do you expect to do that?" Brendon asked.

Spencer thought about it for a moment, and took the easy way out. He shrugged. "I’ll apologize."

"He doesn’t want you to apologize to him," Brendon said. "He wants you to stop lying to him."

Spencer felt a stab of defensiveness. "I haven’t lied to him about anything." He wanted to add, ‘ever,’ but he wasn’t sure if that was entirely true. At least he knew he hadn’t lied to him very recently.

"Yeah, you haven’t told him the truth, though, either."

"You want me to tell him..." Spencer trailed off. He didn’t know how to finish the question. "What do you want me to tell him?"

Brendon rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Spencer. Good fucking God. You don’t want him, but no one else can have him, either. Is that how it is?"

Spencer had to think about it, and thinking about it hurt his head even worse.

"That’s not very fair to your supposed best friend," Brendon said.

"It’s not fair," Spencer agreed. "It’s not true."

"Is that so?" Brendon asked.

"Yeah. Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know, but..." Spencer slowly rose from the floor. "Maybe."

"Do you want him to constantly be miserable?" Brendon prodded.

"No," Spencer said immediately.

"Really?" Brendon asked.

Spencer sighed. "I’m going for a walk." He took two steps before Brendon spoke again.

"I thought you loved him."

Spencer stopped. He hadn’t moved yet by the time Jon came back, holding a limp and torn piece of notebook paper in one hand.

"Keltie took the Jeep and left, and Ryan took Brendon’s car, and left this note in its place."

He held it up and Brendon read it aloud. "'I.O.U.’"

"Yeah." Jon said. "The back says, ‘PS: I’m not coming back.’"

The two of them set their eyes on Spencer again.

"What?" he asked.

"You have to go get him," Brendon said.

"Why me?" Spencer asked, miserably.

"For as long as I've known you, you've acted like you were in charge of keeping Ryan from ruining his entire life," Brendon said. "And maybe you've done an okay job at that, but you've managed to completely fuck up your own in the meantime."

Spencer stared at the ground.

"Even if Jon and I were to go get him and bring him back, what good would that do?" Brendon asked. "You need to fix this, Spencer."

"I don't know how," Spencer said.

"Please," Brendon said. "If you're going to play dumb, we might as well pack up and head home, because there's no way I'm going to be stuck on a bus with you two. But I think you know what you need to do and you're just scared."

"I'm not," Spencer protested, weakly. He wanted to throw up.

"Then go find Ryan, and fix this. Nobody's going to do it for you."

Spencer couldn't look at them. He felt like he couldn't move. It would be easier to give up, go home, and never speak to anyone again. "If I go, he won't talk to me," he said flatly.

"At least you'll have tried," Jon said.

They both stared. Spencer felt close to tears. "I can do that," he said. "I can try."


	4. Chapter 4

Spencer was not psychic. He had no real intuition to speak of. He didn’t always know the right or wrong time to act. The number of times he had made good decisions was not quite up to the level he’d prefer it to be at. Still, he had a bad feeling about what he was about to do.

Brendon had nagged him nonstop, on a daily basis, since they’d all vacated the cabin too early and too angry, and without any work to show for their time there. Brendon was always apt to remind Spencer of three things: Everything is fucked, it’s all your fault, Spencer, and go talk to Ryan.

Spencer tried to talk to Ryan. His efforts did not extend to actually talking to Ryan, but he made an effort. He took tiny steps in the direction of talking to Ryan, but then came the moment when he had to push the last button of Ryan’s telephone number, or the moment when Spencer had to get out of the car and ring Ryan’s doorbell, and everything would stop. Spencer would freeze and imagine what might be about to happen.

Ryan would say: What are you doing here, I don’t want to talk to you, we can’t be friends anymore, what do you have to say for yourself? And Spencer would say: I don’t know. Until he had a better answer than that, he couldn’t talk to Ryan.

But nearly an entire month had passed and Brendon grew tired of waiting. Jon was polite about it, but it was obviously unfair of Spencer to jeopardize everyone’s career for a reason not even Spencer could put into words. Ryan hardly acknowledged anyone who was still on speaking terms with Spencer; he wouldn’t talk about what happened, and when pressed, he would shrug his shoulders and avert his eyes and say it didn’t matter. Spencer heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that Ryan and Keltie had broken up, but that only made him feel worse. No one would believe that was never Spencer’s intention.

So Brendon had decided to take things into his own hands, for better or for worse. He sent out invitations to the band, third grade birthday party style, inviting them on a camping trip. They were to be without the luxuries of their cabin. This was a real camping trip, with tents and sleeping bags and canteens and everything. 'Instruments not necessary,' the invitation had said, 'Just prepare to bond until we’re a band again.'

The drive to Brendon’s designated campsite left Spencer tense and wary. It was in the same general direction he used to take to get to the cabin. The views outside the car windows were similar for most of the ride. Ryan was going to be there. He felt like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime. He still had time to turn around, to forget it and go back home and call Ryan whenever Brendon stopped holding him hostage in the desert. But Brendon had said that Ryan was going, that Ryan was willing to make the effort, and so ought Spencer to, in turn. Spencer wasn’t an idiot; he knew Brendon probably said exactly the same thing to Ryan, but it worked, presumably. And anything that presumably worked was better than anything else Spencer had tried to do thus far. Maybe Ryan wouldn’t be there. Maybe Ryan would be the one to decide to turn around and go back home. Spencer didn’t know if that would make him feel better or not. There was a good chance, no matter what happened, he’d feel relieved and terrified at exactly the same time. He resigned to his fate. He didn’t turn around. And Ryan was there.

Jon and Brendon were having a conversation amongst a strewn about group of backpacks and sleeping bags and disassembled wrapped up tents with metal stakes. Ryan was sitting atop his bag to the side of them, curled up into himself with his knees practically to his chin, busy with his cell phone. He was wearing big sunglasses, a hat, and a decided frown. Spencer felt like letting his head fall out of defeat until his forehead honked the horn. Maybe it would be so pathetic everyone would feel bad and let him go home. He barely managed to keep himself upright out of sheer resolve. Something had to be done, and he had to go and do it. He felt sick. Brendon approached the car with a plastic Ziploc bag outstretched, and knocked on the window with two knuckles. Spencer rolled it down rather than taking the energy to actually get out of his car.

"Keys," Brendon said simply, holding the bag in front of Spencer’s face. He hesitated; acknowledged that this was really his last chance of escaping, then pulled the keys from the ignition and dropped them into Brendon’s bag. "Phone," Brendon said when this was done.

Spencer crossed his arms over his stomach and gave a pointed look to Ryan and then back to Brendon. Brendon sighed and turned and demanded Ryan surrender his phone now that everyone had arrived. Ryan hurled it at Brendon in a way that probably would have cracked a bone in anyone else, but Brendon caught it easily in one hand, before it put a dent in Spencer’s car, dropped it in the bag, and said again to Spencer, "Phone."

Spencer rolled his eyes and groped blindly through the glove compartment to find it. After first pulling out three pens, a marker, and a bottle of hand sanitizer that didn’t even belong to him, he gave Brendon his phone.

Brendon took a step back while he closed the plastic bag and stuffed it into the very bottom of his backpack. When he stood again, he grinned at them all. "Welcome to the canyon," he announced. "Get your shit and follow me."

\----

Spencer's mom adored birthday parties. For a month beforehand, she went overboard. Not content with little paper hats from the party store printed with cartoon characters, she made her own hats, and her own favors, and elaborate decorations. The parties were always themed. When Spencer was in fourth grade, he'd let her talk him into a Revolutionary War themed party -- undoubtedly the lamest party in the history of the nation. The entire house was decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. She'd rented a George Washington costume and made Spencer's dad recite the Declaration of Independence while wearing it. Three kids pretended to get stomach aches and called their parents to come pick them up. That was the last straw. After, Spencer's birthdays became a more subdued affair. His mom had the twins to dote over, and he was allowed to take a few friends to a movie and dinner at Pizza Hut, or even to the water park. It was nice. It was nothing he cared too much about. Getting presents was cool, but it's not like he was any different the day before his birthday than he was the day after.

One thing Spencer was never allowed to do was have a sleepover. His mom said she didn't want the responsibility of having so many children at their house all night. She seemed convinced that left to their own devices in the basement, Spencer and his friends would turn into notorious delinquent the moment the sun went down. Spencer had always wanted to have a sleep over -- not a dumb girly sleep over, but an awesome one, with too much soda and slightly dirty movies and man hunt in the neighborhood after dark. Spencer begged his mom for years, but she always made a slightly worried looking face and offered to take his friends to the Adventuredome instead. That was a pretty decent trade off, but still. It was not the same. By the time he was in sixth grade, Spencer had basically given up on the sleepover idea. It was then that his mom relented.

Rosalee, one of the ladies she worked with at the doctor's office, had given his mom some book about the perils of overly restrictive parenting. It admonished parents who kept their children sheltered from 'the traditional joys of childhood'. Spencer flipped through the book once while his mom was in the bank. The joys he was missing out apparently consisted primarily of skinned knees, fishing in creeks, and hot chocolate. He thought it was all pretty bogus, but he knew his mom could get kind of crazy about any popular trend. He started mentioning in a sighing voice what a shame it was that he'd never gotten to have a sleepover, and now he was too old. After a week of this psychological warfare, she relented and told him he could have some friends stay over -- just a few! -- the next Friday.

Spencer called Ryan and told him right away. Together they figured out who else to invite. Spencer spent the whole week with butterflies in his stomach. He was excited, of course, but he was nervous, too. His mom took him to the grocery store on Thursday so they could buy soda and chips and other junk food she usually frowned on. He worried that they'd be bored, or that nobody except Ryan would come. He slept over all the time anyway, but he was like family and didn't really count. The day of the party, he ran home from school. He'd cleaned his bedroom the day before, and the basement was all set. He dithered around in the kitchen for a while, but he felt restless. His mom told him to take a shower, but he rolled his eyes. That was lame.

Ryan came over at three. They both were lurking in the kitchen and his mom got antsy. She sent them outside. Spencer sat on the curb while Ryan tried to ollie a two by four in the street. At five Spencer's mom called them in to have dinner. She made grilled cheeses with tomato soup. She was taking the book's lessons to heart. Spencer ate half his sandwich and snuck the rest to the dog under the table. He didn't eat the soup; it was salty and gross. Ryan finished his own bowl and Spencer's too. They went downstairs and watched TV for a while. This wasn't very much different than a normal Friday night, except for the tight feeling in his stomach.

Trevor showed up at six, with Brent in tow. Spencer's mom started to ask about Brent's mom -- she'd just had an operation on her ankle. Spencer frowned and ushered them down to the basement. They dropped their bags on the floor. Trevor flopped onto the couch. They loafed around for a half an hour until Chris showed up.

"Hey," he said. "What's up, guys?" Everyone shrugged. Ryan was picking at his guitar. "Listen, you know that Vanessa Deas lives down the street right?"

Of course Spencer knew. Vanessa Deas was like the queen of the school. Ryan sniffed. He pretended to be unconcerned with the petty affairs of sixth graders.

"Well I called her and Lauren is at her house and they want us to go hang out," Chris said. He was what Spencer's mom called forward. She didn't like him very much.

"We could do that," Spencer said. Really he was annoyed that Chris had come just so he could hang out with Vanessa.

They went on the street. The sky was purple and rose behind the mountains. The last cicadas of summer chirped. Spencer didn't wear a coat. He was a little cold. Ryan was silent and bored. He'd never liked Chris very much. The girls were sitting on their front steps. Vanessa's parents had good jobs and drove fancy cars that they parked in the garage. Her house was new and big, but it looked basically like all the others on the block. Spencer didn't like her very much. His mom didn't like her parents. She waved when she saw them. They stood around in her driveway. Chris made an idiot of himself trying to do tricks with Ryan's skateboard. He fell and scraped up his palm. Vanessa took him inside to wash his hand. They came back out, giggling. Spencer rolled his eyes.

Ryan was sitting sulkily by himself. "Let's go to 7-11," he said.

Lauren overheard. She had had a crush on Ryan for years. Ryan thought she was dim and resembled like a rabbit.

They all ended up going. The manager of the store wouldn't let so many kids in at once so they went in two by two while the rest waited in the parking lot. Spencer went in with Ryan. Ryan looked pale and pink under the florescent lights.

"What did you want to get?" Spencer asked.

Ryan shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "I just can't stand those girls."

They loitered in the candy aisle. Ryan was torn between regular and sour Skittles. The clerk kept giving them nasty looks. One of Spencer's baseball coaches came in to buy a gallon of milk. He cornered Spencer and tried to get him to commit to playing the following spring, even though Spencer was pretty sure his parents were going to have him join another league. The coach left. Ryan bought his Skittles. He tore the corner off the bag and poured a few into Spencer's hand. Spencer only liked the red ones. He picked them out and gave the rest back to Ryan.

They walked back to Vanessa's house. It nearly eight thirty. The street lights were on. It wasn't late, not really, but Spencer's mom normally made him come in once it got dark, so it seemed late. Chris and Trevor shot some hoops. One of their stray shots knocked over Brent's Slurpie. Some older kids from the far end of the development rode past on their bicycles, scaring them back into Vanessa's driveway. It was thrilling to be outside and free at night, but this was boring.

"Let's do something," Spencer said. "Let's play a game."

Chris laughed, but Brent said, "Yeah, this sucks, guys. We could sit around anytime."

They got flashlights and made armbands from some of the scrap fabric his mother kept by her sewing machine. His parents were sitting in the living room watching television. Spencer saw them watching. He was glad when things were settled and they were outside at the end of the cul-de-sac. They made teams. More kids had appeared, kids from the neighborhood that Spencer knew and others he did not recognize. It was kind of a throng. Trevor had taken charge. He divided the group into two teams. Spencer made sure he was on the same team as Ryan. They set the boundaries; Chris announced the time. They would play for one hour. Someone shouted 'Go!', and they all scattered.

Spencer was going to follow some kid in a red hat down to the empty lot at the corner of Calabash Place; the house there had never finished being built. It would be an ideal place to hide. But Ryan grabbed his hand and tugged him silently towards the dark wooded space that ran between the Johnson's house and the house with the evil Doberman pincher. They ran through the brush. Twigs scratched Spencer's arms. These houses backed up to a drainage ditch that ran the length of the entire block. Ryan ran down the hill. Spencer followed, stumbling. He didn't like this clambering through the dark. Their flashlights cast two misty, narrow paths of light. It was a shock when he stepped into the puddle at the bottom of the ditch. His shoes and socks were soaked.

They ran through the water, down to the far end of the ditch, where it drained into a larger, marshy area. Ryan cut through the long grass and climbed up the far side of the hill. They were at the main road now. A few cars sped by, wind gusting in their wake, but largely it was silent.

"I think we're out of bounds," Spencer said, catching his breath. He had a stitch in his side from the run.

"I don't care," Ryan said. "They'll never know."

They dashed across the street when no cars were coming. They jumped over the guardrail on the far side and walked through the deserted mall parking lot. It was quiet and strange.

"I wish I had my skateboard," Ryan said.

"Yeah," Spencer replied. He was a little tired and a little disappointed. This was not what sleepovers were like on television. He was glad to be with Ryan, but he wanted to go home.

Ryan sat down on the asphalt. Spencer took off his wet shoes. If his mom saw him in his socks in a parking lot she'd have a fit. She worried about things like broken glass and tetanus.

"This was a dumb idea," Spencer said.

"What?" Ryan asked.

"This stupid sleep over," he said. "This isn't fun at all."

Ryan shrugged. "It's okay," he said.

"I figured people would want to like, hang out with me," Spencer says.

Ryan frowned. "Dude, they came to your house."

"Yeah," Spencer said. "But Chris just came to hang out with Vanessa."

"She's such a whore," Ryan said.

Spencer snickered. "Yeah," he said. "But he did just come to see her."

"Whatever," Ryan said. "Chris sucks."

"Yeah," Spencer said. "Girls suck."

"Yeah," Ryan said. "They kinda do."

"Chris just wants to ask Vanessa to the Homecoming dance," Spencer said. "That's so lame."

"You're not going to go?" Ryan asked. He was playing with a blade of grass that had pushed up through a crack in the blacktop.

"No," Spencer said. "I don't want to go."

"Good," Ryan said. "What girl would agree to go with you, anyway?"

Spencer punched him. "Yeah, whatever," he said. "Are you going?"

"No," Ryan said. "I went last year. It was stupid."

"Yeah?" Spencer asked.

"Yes," Ryan said. "I danced with Kaitlyn Sheppard. She stepped on my toes."

"Why'd you dance with her?" Spencer asked.

Ryan shrugged. "I don't know. She asked me."

"So you didn't like her?" Spencer asked.

"Not really," Ryan said.

"Good," Spencer said.

There was silence for a moment. Cars rushed by. Somewhere far off, sirens blared.

"Maybe we should go back," Spencer said.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "It's getting kind of late."

Spencer put back on his shoes, but not his socks. He balled them up and left them on the ground.

"You should stay over the night of homecoming," he said.

Ryan looked at him. "Yeah," he said. "That would be cool."

"We can have a real sleep over," Spencer said, as they sloshed back through the wood.

"I'll paint your nails and you can do my hair," Ryan said in a high voice, laughing.

Spencer punched him again. Ryan stumbled. "Jerk," Ryan said, but he was smiling.

"Don't make fun of my sleepover," Spencer said. "It's going to be awesome."

"I know," Ryan said. "I know."

"Better than tonight," Spencer said. "I don't need lame ass Chris."

"No," Ryan said. "You just need me."

\-----

People in their right minds did not camp in the desert in the summer, so no one else was around for as far as they could see. Though it was finally September, the very end of summer had come even hotter. Occasionally a cool breeze would rush past Spencer and blow the hair back from his face, but it would go so quickly and leave him even hotter that he didn’t dare mention it out loud, in case he had made the whole thing up. The campsite had recently reopened after its annual May-until-August closing, because, had Brendon gotten the idea to visit a few days earlier, they all probably would have died of heat exhaustion. This way, they were only going to suffer miserably.

When the cars were out of sight and everyone had felt the full effects of serious, unrelenting awkward silence, Brendon threw his things down on the ground near an ancient and grimy looking public water faucet. It was there to keep them alive, but it looked unnatural sticking up from the ground, and wildly out of place. A long legged spider sat near the base and made Spencer take a nonchalant step backwards. The time was approaching seven o’clock in the evening, but the sun was still high in the sky; it beat down on them harshly and turned everything yellow and red. The ground was red, Jon was red, Brendon was yellow, Ryan was pale and a little bit of both and he looked unfazed by the heat; a little like he was dressed to go on a cruise on the Love Boat. Spencer couldn’t look at his own face, but he felt red. The water dripped and Brendon snorted when he got tired of waiting for someone else to speak first. It was a ridiculous situation.

"I have to go pay the nice people somewhere in that direction," Brendon pointed, and searched for something in his bag. The other three watched him. He was the safety zone, and it made Spencer nervous to think he’d be left alone with just Ryan and Jon. "And I’m going to buy some firewood while I’m there so we can cook dinner." He stood again and showed off a bag of marshmallows.

"Buy it?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah, I did my research and learned it’s illegal to burn wood you gather here. You have to buy special firewood from the park rangers, or whatever," Brendon answered. "Thanks to my thoroughness, we won’t be imprisoned tonight."

"Is the only reason you brought us here is so you could roast marshmallows?" Ryan asked. It was a shock of noise, familiar and unheard for too long a time previous. Spencer hadn’t heard him speak an entire sentence, maybe even a single word, since he left the cabin.

"Yes," Brendon said, and walked away.

Spencer felt bad for Jon. He was shuffling around and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, probably trying to decide the right thing to say. Ryan dropped to the ground and lounged against his backpack. He stared into the distance, out toward the horizon.

"Well," Jon said finally. Brendon was becoming a speck in the distance. "I’m going to set up my tent." He paused and grinned at Spencer. "Don’t mind me while I pitch a tent."

Spencer laughed and stole a look at Ryan, who hadn’t even cracked a smile. Spencer’s smile fell and he became stoic again, keeping his eyes on the dusty ground.

A minute later there was a clatter of metal and a thud, and Jon laughed from where he fell. "This is really going to suck," he said.

Spencer bit his lip and decided to help out. When Brendon finally returned, walking much slower than was really necessary, he lugged along with him a bag with a bundle of logs inside. Spencer and Jon had managed to get the tent three-quarters of the way standing. Brendon dumped the logs and demanded Ryan help him with the other one. By the time the sun had finally begun to set, both tents were finished. When the wind blew, Jon and Spencer’s wavered a little, but there was nothing else they could do, save bring power tools into the mix. Spencer hoped it would suffice.

"Logically," Ryan said when they were finished, "Brendon and I will sleep in this one, and you guys can sleep in that one." He stumbled over the words ‘you guys,’ like he was about to say their names but couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘Spencer’ and had saved himself as quickly as he could.

Spencer prepared for Brendon to refuse. Brendon’s agenda was obviously to reconcile Ryan and Spencer, and Spencer had already gotten used to the idea of sharing cramped sleeping quarters with a boy who desperately hated him. But Brendon was unfazed. He shrugged one shoulder and said, "Okay."

Ryan seemed surprised, too, but he pretended not to be. "Okay," he repeated.

Brendon sat down before his pile of logs, next to his bag of marshmallows, and produced a lighter from his bag. He looked lost. "How do I do this?" he wondered out loud.

The sky had turned pale lavender. Ryan sat next to Brendon and took off his sunglasses. The sun had burned a faint line across his cheeks, just beneath where the lenses ended. "Light it on fire," he answered.

Spencer rubbed his forehead and rolled his eyes when no one could see. Jon stopped trying to push a metal stake further into the ground and joined them. "No, you need kindling, or whatever."

"The fuck is kindling?" Brendon asked.

"It’s... like..." Jon said, but gave up when Brendon grabbed the biggest log in his bag and held his lighter to it.

Spencer took Brendon’s bag from him and dug through it. Sure enough, everything Brendon needed, and just had no idea how to utilize, was inside of it. He dumped everything out while Brendon complained that nothing was happening. Spencer molded a mound of kindling, two handfuls of it, he remembered, and then placed small sticks around it in an encasement. Without explanation, he grabbed Brendon’s log out of his hands and added that, with a few more, around his creation. Then he struck a match that had been so conveniently included in the bag, and threw it in the middle.

While his fire grew the other three stared at it with wide eyes. When it looked like a photograph out of Camping Life magazine, they turned their attention to Spencer. "How did you know how to do that?" Brendon asked.

Spencer suppressed a smile. "Magic."

"He’s been camping before," Ryan revealed, almost annoyed, rendering everything Spencer had just done considerably less awesome.

"Like a thousand times?" Jon asked while Brendon recovered and opened his marshmallows. Spencer handed out purchased sticks.

Ryan looked at his with distaste. "What if it leaves wood in my food?"

"That’s half the fun," Brendon said thickly through a mouthful of uncooked marshmallows.

Spencer had brought some trail mix along with him, because it seemed fitting, but now he worried he should have brought something of more sustenance. When Brendon said he would "take care of everything," Spencer did not foresee the only food Brendon would take care of would contain mostly sugar.

Ryan had been fidgeting for ten minutes before he finally spoke of what was on his mind. "Brendon," he said, still sounding foreign to Spencer’s ears. "Can I please have my phone for, like, five minutes?"

Brendon gave Ryan a stern look. "Can we agree on five minutes a day? Or ten, fine. But no more than that. I’m serious about this trip; I don’t want us to have come all the way out here for no reason. I’m not pushing you to do anything, or to say anything; you will when you want to. I’m being fair, so be fair to me."

Ryan looked guilty. "Okay..." he said.

Brendon held out his hand, which Ryan shook. The deal was struck. "You can get it out of my bag," Brendon said.

Ryan went after it. Spencer looked at his shoes and declined another marshmallow. He needed something real to eat; he needed water, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand up. He wanted to remain as invisible as possible, at least until he struck up the courage to be the one to speak first. To really say something to Ryan. He knew he should grab Ryan right then and drag him to away, out of earshot of the others, and talk to him until the sun came up. He should apologize and ramble on about how important their friendship is, or was, to him. He should do something, but he couldn’t do anything at all.

"Where did you put it?" Ryan called out to Brendon. "I don’t see it in here."

Brendon sucked marshmallow off his thumb. "Ryan, tell me something," he began, disregarding the question, "did you erase everything we did up at the cabin?"

Ryan prodded for a moment longer, and then froze. Spencer frowned and felt even worse than he had a minute ago. Brendon had been doing so well at not dredging up negativity until then. He felt confronted, and no one was even talking to him.

Ryan must have understood first. He stiffened and stood up straight and glared at Brendon. "What did you do with my phone?"

"What did you do with my music?" Brendon replied calmly.

Spencer’s jaw dropped. He looked at Jon for reassurance, to know he wasn’t the only one who had not seen this argument coming, just then, but Jon was unreadable. He had his chin in his hands and his eyes shifted back and forth, between Brendon and Ryan, awaiting an outcome and forcing Spencer to do the same.

Ryan crossed his arms. "It was mine to do whatever I wanted to with."

Spencer wished the ground would open up and let him fall. He wondered if Brendon was capable of murder. No one was around to hear it happen.

"It was mine to erase," Ryan added, when no one had said anything.

"Ah," Brendon said. His calm demeanor was unnerving. There had to be something else. "But what about your keys?"

"My keys?" Ryan repeated.

"And Spencer’s," Brendon said. "Where are they?"

Ryan let out a disbelieving noise, a humorless laugh. Spencer eventually recovered from shock. "Brendon!" he yelled.

"You’re the one who erased it," Brendon pointed at Ryan, and then to Spencer, "and you’re the one who made him do it. It’s not like I don’t think we can’t write more, but you’re taking Jon and I for granted."

Everyone looked at Jon. "Yeah," he said halfheartedly. "But don’t get mad at me. It was mostly Brendon’s idea."

Ryan rolled his eyes.

"So we disposed of your things," Brendon concluded.

"Brendon!" Spencer yelled again. "I’m borrowing that car, if I don’t take it back I’ll have to pay for it."

"So find the keys," Brendon said simply.

"We’re in the fucking middle of the desert," Ryan pointed out.

"It’s not like I buried them eleven hundred miles out and left a tumbleweed for a marker," Brendon said. "All you have to do is take a walk down that trail, like, fifteen minutes."

"It’s still fucked up of you, Brendon," Ryan said. "What if someone else finds them?"

"You both need to go," Brendon said, "I don’t care when, but you can’t leave until you do. Go together, and don’t let me see you again until you don’t hate each other anymore. Then, maybe, we’ll have a hope of recovering."

Ryan muttered a string of expletives, turned on his heel, and began marching toward the trail. Spencer’s jaw dropped again. It was well beyond dusk, the sky drawing darker by the minute. He saw no reason to go that night.

"Ryan," he called out, scaring himself that it had come out so easily, and recognizing that it was the first time he had addressed Ryan in weeks. Ryan paid no attention to him."We can go in the morning," Spencer offered, his voice uneven.

"We don’t actually have to go together," Ryan shouted without turning to face Spencer. "I’ll bring your shit back, too. If you want to be a fat ass and sit here eating candy with Jon and Brendon, be my fucking guest."

Spencer stared with wide eyes at Ryan’s back while it drifted further into the night, farther away from their camp. Brendon impatiently bounced his knee at a high velocity, but kept his mouth shut.

"Spencer," Jon said finally. "Just go."

He felt sick, tired, faint, and worn down to nothing, but he stood up, and Brendon gave him a shove in the right direction.

\----

Jill Kellin was hot, but really weird. She was in Ryan's grade and she wore her hair really short and was a champion Irish step dancer. She wore Bright Eyes shirts to school and listened to her Walkman during lunch, huge studio headphones dwarfing her face. She drove to L.A. a few times a month to see shows, even though she was just 17. Spencer knew at least five people who secretly had a crush on her, but nobody who had actually dated her, or even hung out with her much.

When Spencer was a junior, he took pre-calculus, even though most of the kids in the class were seniors. Jill was in the class. She sat in the back corner and developed a strange rapport with the teacher, Mr. Weiss. Mr. Weiss was twenty three years old; this was his first year teaching full time. He was short and most of the girls thought he was cute. Spencer was pretty sure Jill flirted with him, which he thought was kind of weird.

Anyway, Spencer nursed a secret fascination with Jill. She seemed to live so much in her own world. Spencer, who was painfully aware of other people at all times, envied those with that skill. Second semester, Mr. Weiss decided to give them assigned seats. (Class occasionally degenerated into a gossipy coffee klatch, and parents had complained.) Spencer was one of the first to get his seat. He sat staring at the stickers on his binder, hoping he wouldn't end up sitting next to Emily Hughes, who smelled a little, or Brian Plummer, the varsity quarterback, who had once given Ryan two black eyes. He started imagining horrific scenarios that involved threats of bodily harm and him being required to do Plummer's homework for the rest of the year.

He was startled when Jill sat down next to him. He looked up. She smelled warm and sweet, like she'd been baking cookies.

"Hello Spencer Smith," she said.

"Hi," he said. He was shocked she knew his name.

Sitting next to Jill was kind of an experience. She wanted to talk all the time, even during lectures. She told Spencer about the cat she rescued, about the scarf she was crocheting, about the trip she wanted to take to Tacoma. He never had anything nearly half as interesting to share with her. Sometimes -- like when she wore her hair pinned back from her face and it fell to her shoulders, soft and curling -- he was surprised he managed to get out two words.

Ryan didn't like when Spencer talked about Jill, which was weird, because she reminded him a lot of Ryan. They both seemed quiet, but once you got to know them you couldn't get them to shut up. And they were both tall and thin and had dark brown hair. Jill was a big dreamer, like Ryan was and pretended not to be. She wanted to be a dancer. She wanted to study in New York. Spencer told her about the band, almost making it sound like his idea instead of Ryan's. Jill told him that if they played a show he had to let her know, because she'd be there with bells on.

Jill was terrible at math. She was really, really bad. She was 'in danger of failing' bad. Spencer took pity on her. He offered to help her with the assignments once a week. She was a senior, and if she didn't pass, she wouldn't graduate. At first they met in the library, but the Booster Club met there too and with the noise it was hard for Jill to concentrate. Spencer suggested they go to his house. Jill agreed. Nearly every Wednesday, she met him in front of the school and they drove to his house and sat at the kitchen table with their books and notebooks spread everywhere. Spencer's mom was a little wary at first, but when Jill enthused over the paper mache shamrocks she hung in the window for St. Patrick's day, she was won over.

The only thing that sucked was that Ryan wouldn't come over if Jill was coming over, which made Spencer feel weird and sick in some way, almost like he was doing something wrong. Spencer asked his mom and she said that Ryan wasn't comfortable around people he didn't know very well, which was true. But Jill was weird and a little soft spoken. She was probably the least intimidating person ever. Ryan was just being an ass.

Jill got a B minus on the midterm. They got the grades back at the end of class one day and she squealed and jumped when she saw hers. She made Spencer give her a high five.

"This is practically unbelievable," she said. "How ever can I make it up to you, Spencer Smith?"

"Um," Spencer said. "It was really nothing."

She made him a mix tape. She'd decorated the cover with shiny stickers. Spencer kept it in his backpack for a while before listening to it. The music was mostly unfamiliar. Spencer's music taste was largely informed by what Ryan was into, but Ryan hadn't burned him any CDs in a few months. He listened to it alone in his room one night, all in the dark but for one candle that he'd taken from the table beside the couch. Spencer wanted it to be raining. It was a night that seemed to need rain. He wondered if he loved Jill. There was the distinct possibility that he did, but how was he to know? He wanted to talk to Ryan. Ryan had dated a lot more. Ryan would know but he had been a little distant lately. Maybe Ryan liked Jill. Maybe that was the problem. That thought made Spencer's stomach burn.

He figured things would be okay after school ended. It was like a reset button was hit when the last bell rang that last day of classes. Spencer and Ryan became SpencerandRyan again, no matter what had happened the previous nine months. And they weren't really fighting. They still saw each other every day at school and nearly every weekend. The band practiced twice a week. It was just a little different, somehow.

Then Jill wrote Spencer a note asking him to prom.

Spencer knew he was supposed to be thrilled, but as he unfolded the little square of notebook paper on the way to physics class, he wanted to throw it away, or pretend it was addressed to some other Spencer. As bearded Mr. Gnaffes lectured about tangents and velocity, Spencer thought about Jill's soft hands, her slim wrists, the bright odd look that was often in her eyes. He thought with a little horror of all the other school dances he'd been to, how pointless they were, what a bad time he'd always had. And he thought of Ryan. Ryan was going to prom with a girl named Kelly. It didn't seem right that Spencer would be there, and Ryan would be there, and they would not be there together. Jill was not friends with Ryan or Ryan's friends. They would not sit together. It was wrong. It seemed all wrong.

Still, he agreed to go. He rented a grey tuxedo and wore a teal bow tie because that's what Jill told him to wear. He bought her a corsage of gardenias. She picked him up in her tiny Volkswagon Rabbit. She said her parents didn't want any pictures, but she came in so Spencer's mom could fuss over them both and pose them in front of the fireplace for way too many snapshots. Her dress was gorgeous and old. The bodice was heavy with bead work. The short skirt was fringed. She wore elbow length cream satin gloves. She looked beautiful. Spencer wondered what color Ryan's date wore. Ryan was very picky about some things.

Before they went to the casino where the prom was being held they pulled over in a parking lot and smoked a joint. Spencer had only smoked a few times and he kind of liked it. They arrived late. He put his arm through hers and escorted her inside. They sat with her friends. He knew them only by sight. She was stingy with introductions, but she might not have realized that he didn't know anyone. One of the guys had worn a kilt. Spencer thought that was brave. He didn't see Ryan until they were serving dinner. Ryan was sitting three tables away with his back to Spencer, but Spencer knew him right away. He'd taken the gauges in his ears out because Kelly's mom didn't approve. He wore a tan suit.

The food tasted like cardboard. Jill wasn't really eating because she was vegan and there was nothing for her except salad. Ryan got up and walked towards the restroom. Spencer coughed. "Excuse me," he said. "I'll be right back."

The bathroom was empty and dim. Too much black marble. Spencer wet a paper towel and held it to his forehead. A toilet flushed. Ryan came out and washed his hands.

"Hey," Spencer said. "Are you going to ignore me all night?"

Ryan frowned. "I'm not ignoring you. I'm here with Kelly. You're here with Jill. I'm being a good date."

Something inside of Spencer sparked. "I don't know why you hate me," he said.

"I don't," Ryan said. "You know I don't hate you."

"You're acting like that," Spencer said.

"No," Ryan said. "I'm your friend, Spencer. That's what I am and that's what I'll always be."

"Ryan," Spencer said. His voice cracked. His closed his eyes, suddenly close to tears.

"I'll see you later," Ryan said. "I have to get back."

He finished drying his hands and left. The door swung back and forth. Spencer's face crumpled.

He went back to the table. Jill was talking to a girl in back cat-eye glasses about going to Seattle to go thrifting. Spencer sat down and smiled. After the food was taken away, he danced with Jill, and then he danced with one of her friends, short and softer. He hated dancing. He felt graceless. The prom ended at 11. He thought Jill would take him home but she invited him to a party at a friend's house. They drove for a while and shared another joint. Spencer took off his tie. They laughed at the frivolous girls in Cinderella dresses who had been elected to the court.

Spencer did not call his mother to let her know he would be staying out. He would be grounded for a month. The party was loud and strange. It was by the college and most of the kids were college students. Spencer drank more than he had before. He felt easy and loose. Jill stayed with him all night. Nothing really made sense. He wasn't very happy. This wasn't what he'd wanted.

In the early morning they fell together on someone's unmade bed and Spencer kissed her mouth and kissed her shoulders and she laughed and held him and guided him and made soft sweet noises and it was nothing like Spencer thought it would be. It was more sudden and easier and there was no apprehension, just her smooth white body in the dim light and their breath, intermingling, and everything slower and sweeter and kinder until he fell asleep with his head on her breast.

School was nearly over. The seniors missed a lot of the remaining days. Spencer only saw Jill a few more times. She smiled at him and once put her arm over his shoulder, but they didn't talk about that night. Spencer was okay with that. He didn't want to talk about it. It was nothing. It was a shred, a wisp, nothing. School ended. Ryan got into a fight with his father about college, and stayed at Spencer's house nearly every day that summer. It was as if nothing had happened between them. Spencer never told Ryan he slept with Jill. There never seemed to be a time and a place to do so.

Spencer didn't think of Jill much, hardly thought of her at all, because there were other girls and other things and after a while high school and all that seemed too long ago. They were like someone else's memories. It was a shock when he opened an email one day and it was from her. She was in school, in Boston. She had seen him on TV. She wanted to meet up. They came through Boston a month later and after the show Spencer took a cab to the address she gave him. Her apartment was cramped and full of bric-a-brac. She looked exactly the same.The went to a bar and then back to her place and he fucked her and it was very good. In the morning he made her oatmeal and laughing, she showed him to the door and told him not to be a stranger. That was something. It was something. He didn't love her. He hadn't missed her. He thought she was beautiful and she was a good time and she had been the first person he'd ever known intimately, but it wasn't love. Love could never feel so weightless, so easy.

\----

A twig snapped under Ryan’s foot. "Do you have some kind of addiction?" he asked without looking back at Spencer. He slowed down and eventually came to a stop, putting a few feet of distance between them, so that their features were partially concealed by shadows and the inevitable conversation wouldn’t have to be so much like real life.

Spencer stared at Ryan’s neck and Ryan’s ear, anywhere but Ryan’s eyes, and he swallowed. "What?" he asked, quieter than he intended.

"Are you an alcoholic?" Ryan put it bluntly. "Are you on drugs, or something? What about sex?"

Spencer shook his head. "What about sex?" he repeated.

"Are you addicted to it?" Ryan asked.

Spencer sighed. "No. I’m not. Why are you asking me this?"

"What about Keltie? Are you dating her now?"

Spencer felt indignant. "Of course not."

Ryan nodded and crossed his arms. "Of course not. So you weren’t in love with her."

"Why the fuck would I be in love with her?" Spencer shot back, feeling he was already losing the battle.

"Then there is no other excuse... there’s no other reason for what you did, except that you just didn’t think. You didn’t think about our friendship or what might happen to it, or how long it’s lasted and how much we’ve invested in it. You just wanted to sleep with someone that I cared about, and you didn’t think."

Spencer didn’t say anything.

Ryan looked at the ground. "So now you tell me you were an idiot, you did a stupid thing, you’re sorry, you’ll never do it again, you’re only human, and that in time I’ll forgive you." He paused and waited for Spencer to repeat it, but Spencer stood his ground and kept his mouth shut.

Ryan rolled his eyes when Spencer’s opportunity had passed unused. "Well, I don’t want to forgive you yet. Maybe I never will. That’s how I feel right now, although, if I make the decision to cut you out of my life completely all in one day, I wouldn’t be any better than you were. I have to take the time to think about it. And we have to consider the band. Obviously we can’t break it up without Jon and Brendon putting up a fight."

Ryan considered something for a moment. Spencer could see the cogs of his mind turning in the way the lines in the skin around his eyes changed, in the way he curled the fingers of his right hand into his palm. He could practically see the words Ryan was thinking, but he had no idea what they meant. He could see the text, but it was written in a foreign language. "I thought you would make it a little bit harder for me," Ryan said eventually. "I thought at least you would apologize."

Then Spencer tried to regard his own feelings. He realized he had stiffened up into a mass of anxiety and terror. He was afraid to hear what Ryan was saying and he was afraid to respond with anything that might make it worse. He had been biting down hard on his tongue and his throat felt like it was closing up. His breathing was shallow and erratic and every intake of air made him feel like sobbing and grabbing onto Ryan’s knees and holding himself there until they fused together and he never had to let go.

"Don’t you have anything to say?" Ryan asked. "You followed me in here."

"I can’t..." Spencer choked out and then closed his eyes, in case the sight of Ryan was making it harder. "I did," he said.

"You did," Ryan repeated. "You already did. All right, that’s wonderful. You can go back to the camp, then, and tell the guys we’ve decided to put aside our personal conflict in order to repair our working relationship. That I’ll be fucking thrilled out of my brains to write another record with you." He said this with the most unenthused voice he might have ever used, and dowsed it with sarcasm. "And I’ll go get our keys. I’ll be fine alone; I want to be alone for a while anyway." And then he was gone, practically invisible further down the trail in the night, walking at a quick pace, trying to get away.

Spencer watched him go. He looked tiny; smaller than usual and darker, too, as though the night or everything bad that had ever happened to him had started to fuse into him in Spencer’s absence.

"I..." Spencer said out loud, but too quietly for Ryan to hear, so he spoke up and tried again."I did!" he called out.

Ryan came to a stop and looked over his shoulder, not necessarily at Spencer, but he was listening.

"I did..." Spencer said again, "think. About it. I thought about it a lot... all along the drive back when you made me go get Jon’s car. All I thought about that day was you."

Ryan contemplated this. "And about how to betray me?" he asked, still far away.

"And about how to get you back," Spencer corrected. "From her."

Something about that made Ryan come back. He moved with willful determination; practically stomped right up to Spencer and a moment later he was staring him down, looking furious and sad and anticipatory all at once, like he couldn’t miss an instant of what was about to happen. They were toe to toe, their crossed arms meeting in the middle. It would have made normal people with socially accepted notions of personal space uncomfortable, but it changed nothing in Spencer’s heart. Nothing about Ryan’s body ever made him nervous, it was Ryan’s mind and the things he sometimes said that could reduce Spencer to trembles or fury or boundless happiness.

Spencer opened his mouth to say something else; to try to keep Ryan there, nearby and generally composed, but Ryan cut him off unexpectedly. "Do you ever think," Ryan said quietly, "that there is something happening in our friendship that we never talk about?"

"Yes," Spencer admitted. "I do."

Ryan looked curious. "Are you about to bring it up?"

He wanted to be strong and independent minded about it, but he fell into an old habit. "Do you want me to?"

"I want you to do what you want to do," Ryan said. "Say what you want to say. You followed me in here," he said again.

"I hated her," Spencer said, and once it was out, said the rest of it as quickly as he could. "I hated her that night, not at the cabin, like you think, but the night that you met her. I was trying... trying to talk to you and you were too busy with her. I mean, I wasn’t just trying to talk to you, I was trying to tell you something very important."

"Tell me what?" Ryan asked, but Spencer moved on without answering him.

"And I would have gotten over your relationship with her eventually, maybe, or maybe I would have had a better chance of getting over it if you didn’t completely stop being in my life after that. You pretended to be, but you weren’t. You hardly even lived in Vegas anymore, you didn’t call me, and you wanted me to act like you had grown up and I needed to grow up too and to stop caring about you, and stop needing you. How am I supposed to do that, Ryan?"

"You aren’t," Ryan said. "I’m sorry."

"Don’t fucking apologize to me, I’m the one apologizing to you," Spencer told him. "I’m sorry that I hated her, but I did. She didn’t do anything to me on purpose, she didn’t deserve it, but I couldn’t..." he shook his head, running out of words. "I couldn’t watch it happen. All she wanted was a nice guy who was sweet and funny and successful and a good... fuck."

"So that’s what you were," Ryan said.

"She doesn’t know you the way I know you. You are a million times better than that, and you deserve more. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want you to find out," he promised, "I just wanted her to leave. She had to go because I couldn’t stand to have her there and see her with you for another five minutes. One of us was going to have to go, but I didn’t want it to be you. I never wanted to hurt you, but I felt like I had to do something. I thought things would be better, less complicated, but everything only got worse. I’m sorry for that." He took a deep breath and tried to read Ryan’s thoughts again, and again found it impossible, though Ryan did look less angry than Spencer expected him to be. "You don’t have to forgive me in time, if you don’t want to. I won’t ask you to."

"I forgive you," Ryan said.

Spencer smiled at him, but still felt miserable. He pulled Ryan closer and wrapped his arms around him. "I don’t want you to be alone and miserable all the time, either. That wasn’t my intention."

‘I know it wasn’t," Ryan said, muffled against Spencer’s shoulder. "And I know you don’t."

"I just..." Spencer said, holding onto Ryan tighter. He closed his eyes again. He couldn’t say it.

"I have a bet with myself," Ryan said a while later, his arms still around Spencer’s waist. "A couple of years ago I bet myself a hundred thousand dollars you would never admit to me-"

"I love you," Spencer interrupted. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel Ryan smiling.

"... Until you were an old fucking man, if ever. I didn’t think you had it in you."

"You lost, then," Spencer mumbled, and Ryan pulled away from him, still smiling.

"Tell me again," he said with a grin. "I dare you."

Spencer refused to let go completely and still held on to Ryan’s arms. He looked into his eyes. "I love you."

Ryan kept smiling at him.

"I do," Spencer said, not feeling very jovial.

"I know you do," Ryan said. "You always have."

"I have," Spencer agreed. "Always. So do you."

"I used to think I loved you first, but I’ve since come to the conclusion you’re just a lot more repressed than I am."

Spencer wondered if that was all he was going to get out of him. "Sounds like you’ve thought about it a lot."

Ryan shrugged one shoulder and his smile reappeared. "More than one day, anyway."

Spencer looked at him and waited for something to happen. Something was supposed to click into place then, they were supposed to admit everything they’d been keeping hidden and then the clouds were supposed to part and sunshine or moonlight was supposed to shine down on them; they were supposed to feel lighter and better and happier and as though life was finally the way it was meant for them, as good as they deserved it to be. But something was still in the way.

Ryan shifted his weight. "What about the other thing?"

Spencer faltered. He was confused. "What other thing?"

"Your problem," Ryan said. "The thing that makes Brendon tell me on a weekly basis I need to pay attention to you and be concerned about you and make sure you don’t get into too much trouble, even though he won’t tell me what it is."

Spencer stared at him. He was speechless.

"I couldn’t ask him about it more than once, anyway, because it makes me look bad if I don’t already intimately know all of your problems. People expect it of me. I expect it of myself. But it’s been too hard to talk to you lately. Especially when every time I look at you I want to simultaneously punch you in the face and kiss you."

Spencer felt exhausted. He wanted to push every worry out of Ryan’s mind and for him to focus on the more important issue at hand. "Nothing is wrong with me, Brendon is an idiot," he said. "And I want you to kiss me."

"Brendon isn’t that much of an idiot," Ryan pointed out.

Spencer ignored him."A lot."

Ryan gave him a far away, contemplative look. He put his fingers on his chin.

"Preferably now," Spencer added.

Ryan pretended to be annoyed; he rolled his eyes but the gesture was muted by the smile still on his face. He came closer until their noses pressed against each other, but still, he wouldn’t kiss him. When Ryan spoke his lips brushed against Spencer’s every few syllables, and that alone was already the best kiss of Spencer’s life. He decided he must have been wild with stupidity if he didn’t feel at that hotel what he felt then in the middle of the desert, on the side of an abandoned trail. He could scarcely pay attention to Ryan’s words for all the skipped heartbeats and loud and metaphorical sound of clicking as even more pieces of their life fell into their rightful place."I love you, Spencer," he whispered, the sound mixing into the breeze of the night,"I have loved you since I’ve known what love was."

Spencer curled his fingers into Ryan’s hair and they stood for a moment in exactly that spot, teetering on the very edge of the vast range of platonic friendship they had worked so hard for so many years to upkeep, always in vain, both of them knowing they would reach the end of one day, and both of them about to give up on it together, and at once. He remembered when they were little boys and how it felt to stand on the edge of a swimming pool in the first days of spring, how they had to talk themselves into it and promise to jump together on the count of three. Spencer counted to three in his head and kissed Ryan first.

All of a sudden, Spencer was being introduced to a new Ryan. He had the mind of the old Ryan, but he was new and different in all kinds of ways Spencer hadn’t anticipated. The new Ryan had eyelashes that brushed against Spencer’s cheeks, and skin beneath his eyes and behind his ears that was soft and cool beneath Spencer’s thumbs. The new Ryan had moist lips and a slick tongue and teeth he could feel for the first time. The new Ryan had a slow and complexly detailed method of kissing, and he made a tiny little disappointed noise when pulled away from, one that guaranteed Spencer had to keep going back to him. Spencer decided breathing was now frivolous and secondary to kissing the new Ryan, and tried to defy his body’s need for it for as long as he possibly could.

When he began to see stars, for one reason or another, Ryan parted them fractionally so that they could gasp for air, and so he could talk again. He kept his eyes closed, and Spencer kept his eyes open. "Let me take care of you," Ryan whispered.

"I don’t need to be taken care of," Spencer promised him.

"Tell me what’s wrong, Spencer. What have you been doing? What's the problem?"

"I don’t have a problem, Ryan." Spencer was all mixed up; his heart was elated, his head ached. He didn’t control his voice quite well enough when he said it. He sounded angrier than he really was, unless there was an angry part of him speaking up that he didn’t know about.

Ryan pulled away completely then, and Spencer knew without anything being said that it was over. Ryan gave him some kind of look, a combination of want and need and hurt and exasperation, something that said 'I love you, but I give up. I can’t do anything unless you talk to me.' There. Spencer had finally read his mind.

They walked back to the camp spaced far apart. Brendon and Jon looked at them expectantly, and they tried to smile. Ryan said he was tired, and climbed into Brendon’s tent. Spencer went to Jon’s.

When the fire had died down to practically nothing and everyone was pretending to be asleep, Brendon called out, "Jon actually has the keys in his bag."

"We know," Ryan said.

Spencer smiled over his broken heart and caught Jon’s attention with a wave of his hand. "Ryan didn’t erase the songs, you know," he whispered.

Jon looked shocked. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"I’m sure," Spencer said. He could prove nothing, but he knew.

\----

The hotel they stayed in on the way from Cleveland to Indianapolis was not very nice. The rooms smelt faintly of cigarette smoke. The pillows were flat. The blankets were scratchy. Spencer woke late. His head throbbed and the inside of his mouth tasted dirty. He'd had too much to drink last night. He sat up and his stomach turned. His cellphone rang, shrill. He checked the time. It was eight o'clock. He was late.

He pulled on his soiled jeans and a wrinkled shirt from the floor. His phone rang again. It was Ryan calling. Ryan tried to keep tabs on him. That was something of a joke. Spencer appreciated the gesture but Ryan had enough of a job keeping himself in line. He needed to shave but he didn't have time. He could do it once they got on the bus, even though the bus bathroom was small and cluttered with Brendon's hair products and Spencer needed to hunch over to see in the mirror. He shoved his things in his bag; he hated rushing. He hated the squalor of the tour. He sat on the bed and laced up his shoes. The nausea surged. He closed his eyes. Brendon would be eating fruit loops. Spencer thought he might be sick.

For the third time his phone rang. He answered and yelled, "I'm coming!" and then hung up. He grabbed his bag and shoved his room key in his pocket. He glanced quickly around to see if he'd left anything behind, tried to rub some sleep from his eyes, and let the door slam.

The hall was quiet. Maids wheeled their carts. Spencer waited for the elevator with a besuited couple. They glanced sidelong at him and stood on the far side of the elevator. Spencer leaned against the wall. The lobby was bustling. Spencer saw no one he recognized. The dining room was full of crumpled businessmen and a few families with squalling brats. The guys were at two tables in the corner. Spencer made a cup of decaf tea in a styrofoam cup. He thought about grabbing a bagel but his stomach lurched and he had to close his eyes for a moment to still himself.

He made his way through the tables and slumped into the seat next to Brendon. He dropped his bag to the ground and stirred his tea. He looked up. Everyone was staring at him.

"What?" he asked, frowning.

"Dude," Jon said. "Spencer ..."

"What?" he asked again, urgent. What had he missed in his haste? He looked down. There was nothing on his shirt.

"Spencer's in trouble," Brendon singsonged.

Spencer got to his feet. "Fuck you, guys," he said. He grabbed his tea.

"Your eye, Spence," Ryan said. His voice was without inflection. "What happened to your eye?"

Brendon had a makeup compact in his bag. Spencer didn't ask why. He fumbled with the latch. The thing popped open. Motes of powder puffed out. Spencer peered into the tiny mirror. His eye was dark and swollen. He thought it was allergies. He touched the skin under his eye and flinched. It was tender and taut and purple.

"Shit," he mumbled.

"What did you do?" Ryan asked.

"Don't know," Spencer said. He remembered a bar and a pool table, two swarthy men, forty bucks on the line. He remembered the stink of beer and vomit, and streetlights shining off wet concrete. Beyond that, it was all gone.

"Spencer," Ryan said. There was a warning in his voice.

"Eat your damn eggs," Spencer said. He was in no mood to be lectured.

"Can I paint another one on your other eye so you match?" Brendon asked.

"No," Spencer said.

At the same time, Jon said, "He'll look like a panda."

Spencer made a face.

"Spencer," Ryan said again. He'd eaten his eggs. Spencer pretended not to hear. Ryan stood up suddenly. He grabbed his paper plate and crumpled it.

Zack came to get them. Everyone grabbed their stuff. They turned over their keys and filed out to the bus while Zack checked them out. Ryan glared at him the whole time. The bus smelled kind of stale. Spencer shoved his bag into his bunk and climbed in after. He fell asleep face down with his shoes still on.

Three hours later, he woke. It was dark. He was disoriented. He opened his eyes. It was still dark. He turned. There was a heavy weight on his back. He could not move. He gasped, and flailed. Something was on his face. Something covered his face.

"Stop," someone hissed. "Cut it out."

"Fuck," Spencer said, panting. "Get the fuck off me."

"Tell me what happened," Ryan said.

"Ryan," he said. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Get off!"

"No," Ryan said. "Not until you tell me what happened."

"I don't know," Spencer said.

Ryan shifted. His knee dug into the small of Spencer's back. He twisted and the cloth around Spencer's face tightened.

"Okay," said Spencer. "I don't know. I don't remember."

There was a moment of intense pressure as Ryan rolled out of the bunk. Then the weight was gone and the pressure was gone and Spencer shoved the blanket off his head.

He sat up. "What was that?"

"Don't make me worry about you," Ryan said. His hair hung in front of his face.

"You don't have to worry about me," Spencer said. "I'm fine."

"You have a black eye," Ryan said.

"Shit," Spencer said. "I know."

"People don't just wake up with black eyes," Ryan said. He sat down on the Brendon's bunk, across the aisle.

Spencer rolled his shoulders, stiff from sleep. "I know," he said. "It was nothing. I just had a disagreement."

"A disagreement," Ryan said, slowly.

"Yeah," Spencer said. "Um. There were these guys. They were talking shit."

Ryan shook his head. In the front of the bus, Brendon screamed and Jon laughed. "You should have just walked away."

Spencer stared at his lap. He was still in a fog. "They were talking shit about you," he said. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Oh," Ryan said. He had a blank look on his face.

"They were idiots," Spencer said. "But I couldn't let them get away with it."

Ryan launched himself across the aisle. Spencer flew back and nearly whacked his head on the bunk above. Ryan hugged him. "Thank you," he whispered.

Spencer smoothed Ryan's hair. "It's okay," he said, swallowing down the sting of guilt in his gut. "It's okay. What else could I have done, Ryan? What else could I have done?"

\----

It was still dark when Spencer woke. He'd rolled off of his sleeping pad, and his sleeping bag was damp with dew. Jon was snoring quietly. The air in the tent smelled stale. Spencer closed his eyes again, but he was not near sleep any longer. The conversation with Ryan seemed like a dream rudely aborted. How had it gone so well, and gone so awry? He sat up. The tent was small. His head brushed the nylon ceiling.

Quietly as he could he unzipped the door and crawled outside. The stars were few; the night was inky. He grabbed a flashlight. The fire was nothing more than a few coals and a mound of ash. There was still wood left. Spencer tossed on another log and some balled up newspaper, and set about rebuilding it. In ten minutes, it was blazing fiercely, so hot he had to take a step back. It felt good, though. This time of year it got very cold at night.

All he could think about was Ryan's lips, Ryan's skin, his breath, his nose, all the things he'd never admitted to noticing before. It felt as if someone had loosened a vice clamped on his heart. Ryan loved him, and he loved Ryan, and they'd said that to each other. There was nothing anybody could ever do to change it now. And yet, things were still paused. It made Spencer's head hurt.

It wasn't fair. Of course he did stupid things. They all did stupid things. That was part of it, part of the fun, because they were always forgiven. And if Spencer did stupid things a little more often than the other guys, why was anyone surprised? Spencer was the youngest. Yet it seemed that something was wrong. Brendon knew it, and Ryan knew it too. Only Spencer was oblivious. He stared at the fire. He tried to retrace the course of the last three years. It was startling to think it only that long. It seemed longer. Maybe it was the kind of situation where you needed some distance. He had only just turned twenty. He felt so much older.

He heard one of the tents unzip. He looked up. Jon was poking his head out.

"It's cold in here now," he said. "I need your body heat, man."

Spencer laughed. "Sorry," he said. "I needed some air."

Jon climbed out of the tent and sat down across the fire.

"You're like a regular outdoorsman," Jon said. "This thing is roaring."

"I guess," Spencer said. "My dad taught me how."

"That's cool," Jon said.

Spencer wrapped his arms around his knees. Jon was wearing a sweatshirt, and he pulled his arms out of the sleeves so they flopped stupidly at his sides. There were no other campers. They were far from the road. It was almost painfully still. The whole world seemed enveloped in the light of Spencer's fire.

"Jon," Spencer said. "Do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"Well," Jon said. "You take way too long in the shower. And no offense, but you're kind of rank after we play sometimes. And don't get me started on your ..."

"That's not what I meant," Spencer said. "Do you think I have a problem?"

"I think you've got more than one problem," he said. He no longer sounded like he was teasing.

"Yeah," said Spencer."Maybe."

"I think you might have fixed one of them tonight, thought," Jon said.

Spencer smiled. He couldn't help the warmth that surged in his chest when he thought of Ryan. "Yeah," he said. "I think I did."

"I'm so happy for you guys," Jon said.

"Oh god," Spencer said. "You make it sound like we're engaged or something."

Jon smiled. "Well, come on," he said. "From the day I met you I could tell that there was something different about you and Ryan."

"Really?" Spencer asked.

"Yeah," Jon said. "Spencer, you pay his cell phone bill for him. You iron his clothes. That's a little above and beyond."

Spencer flushed. "I guess so," he said. "But he's so bad with an iron. He never does the seams properly."

Jon laughed. "You're worse than some married couples I know! It's been so weird with you two walking on eggshells around each other. It's going to be nice to have things back to normal."

"Yeah," Spencer said."It really is. But ..." He paused. He didn't know how much of his he ought to share. Still, it was Jon. Jon was the most trustworthy person Spencer knew. "He's still mad at me, or disappointed. Or something."

"I don't think he's disappointed in you," Jon said. "You're a pretty awesome dude."

Spencer snorted and poked the fire. The bottoms of his feet felt like they were burning, but it felt good. "He thinks I'm keeping a secret from him."

"Are you?" Jon asked.

"I don't know," Spencer said. "I don't know. I just ... I don't know why he and Brendon are making such a big deal out of it."

Jon coughed. Brendon's bag of marshmallows was throw on the ground. He fished one out, impaled it on the end of a stick, and thrust it into the heart of the fire. "Do you know when I first met you guys I thought you were like, a dumb kid?"

"That wasn't very nice, Jon Walker," Spencer said.

"I know," Jon said. "But you were so green, and so young looking. I thought Pete was crazy for spending so much time with you guys."

"Little did you know we'd kidnap and indoctrinate you too."

"Seriously," Jon said. "I should have run for the hills."

His marshmallow caught fire. He started blowing on it, but it had already turned into a charred ball of goo. Half of it fell off. Jon popped the other half into his mouth.

"Gross," Spencer said.

"Mmmmm," Jon said. "Carcinogens." He had marshmallow stuck to the corner of his mouth. "But anyway, yeah, I thought you were a dumb kid. All of you were pretty awkward, but you were the worst. I didn't think you were going to last a month on tour."

"I'm glad I inspired such confidence," Spencer said, bland.

"You know it," Jon said. "But I think I thought that for a long time. Even after I knew you guys better, I always kind of figured that Ryan had just kind of brought you along for the ride." Spencer scowled and started to respond. Jon cut him off. "Don't get pissy. We're having a moment of candor, Spencer. Anyway, when you called me that day I was shocked, not just at what you were asking me, but that you were the one asking."

Spencer frowned. Jon had a tendency towards the obtuse. "What's your point?"

Jon laughed. "Oh Spencer," he said. "I love you, buddy."

"I love you too," Spencer said, mollified.

"My point is, if Panic at the Disco the idea is Ryan's, Panic at the Disco the band is yours. You've done a fucking incredible job making all of this work. There are probably a hundred and twenty things you do to make sure we don't like, all oversleep, or that the bus driver isn't an ex con, or that Brendon has his damn juice boxes backstage. You've got a handle on all of that. You always have a handle on it."

Spencer felt secretly a little flattered, but he still didn't understand what Jon was trying to tell him. "I don't mind doing those things. Someone has to."

"But it doesn't always have to be you," Jon said. "And it is. And that sucks. And I think if you're so used to always doing everything for yourself, it can be hard not to. It can be hard to let people help you." He skewered another marshmallow. "I may sound like fucking Doctor Phil right now, but I am trying to make a point."

"Maybe," Spencer said. "That could be true."

"Ryan just wants to help you," Jon said. "You love Ryan, and you'd do anything for him, but he's not a little kid, or even a mopey confused teenager any more. He wants you to rely on him and shit."

Spencer stared. At last, he said, "You know, Cassie would be very proud of you right now."

Jon scrunched his eyes. "Seriously, man. I think she's domesticated me. This is sad."

"It's not," Spencer said. "You're full of unexpected wisdom, Jon."

Jon grinned.

Spencer still stared at the fire. It was too late and he was too tired to come to any conclusions, but he felt in his gut that Jon was right.

"Don't look so glum," Jon said. "You'll figure it out. You and Ryan made up, and I seriously thought the Cubs would win the World Series before that happened. Things will work themselves out. Here, have a marshmallow."

Jon tossed the dirty bag of marshmallows over. Spencer grabbed one of the sticks. He held his marshmallow out to the fire, just a little too close, just near enough that it might catch flame.

\----

Ryan was officially forty-five minutes late an hour ago, but after he was forty-five minutes late, Spencer stopped looking at the clock. He waited impatiently for Ryan at the dinner table and tried to make a mountain range, and then a volcano, and then a dog, out of the cold spaghetti on the plate meant for him. His mother would pass by the dining room every now and then, just to check on him. Normally she wouldn’t have done it, but that night she was rather disappointed in his and Ryan’s mutual agreement to forgo the school dance.

"Are you sure you don’t want to go?" she asked for the millionth time. "I don’t want you to regret it later."

Spencer glared at the wall opposite so she couldn’t catch him. "Yes, I’m sure" he mumbled back for the millionth time.

"Well..." she said, looking at her nails, "what if you and Ryan go to the dance together, just as friends?"

That was enough for him to stop glaring at the wall, and actually turn to glare at her. "Are you serious?"

"What?" she asked defensively. "A whole group of my girlfriends and I did that once when I was in high school. We all got together and made ourselves beautiful and then refused to dance with any of the boys at school, because we were mad at them. One of the football players had tried to date two of us at the same time, and..." she trailed off.

Spencer was horrified.

"Well, we made them all quite jealous, and for the rest of the year we had our pick of all of them," she finished. "You and Ryan could do that for the girls, if you don’t want to go with dates. I think it would be fun for you."

"You want Ryan and I to make ourselves beautiful and make all the girls jealous by going to the dance together?" he asked.

She scoffed and walked away. When she was gone she said something that sounded like, "You’re so uptight."

Jackie wandered in a moment later with a popsicle and stared at him like he was an interesting television program. Spencer wished she would leave.

"Maybe he went to the dance after all and didn’t tell you," she said eventually.

Spencer was going to yell at her but then the back door clattered and Ryan barreled in with wet hair, carrying a bag on his back.

"Is it raining?" Jackie asked, and ran toward the window.

"Was that the door?" Spencer’s mother called out and appeared a moment later.

"No," Ryan said, and passed by Spencer to sit at the table on the opposite side. He tapped Spencer on the top of the head as some kind of greeting. "I mean, no, it’s not raining."

Spencer’s mother didn’t hear him, and she gaped at his hair when she saw him. "Is it raining?" she asked.

Ryan self-consciously combed through his dripping hair with his fingers. "I took a shower," he said.

Spencer looked at him for an explanation. Why did he feel the sudden urge to take a shower when he was already nearly two hours late? But he couldn’t ask in front of his family, and Ryan didn’t look willing to give any details on his own.

He went for the plate of cold spaghetti, but Spencer’s mom grabbed it away from him. "I’ll get you some fresh dinner that Spencer hasn’t been breathing over all night," she said.

"Thank you," he said and smiled up at her, but it faded as soon as she turned away.

"So, Ryan," she continued. "I suppose you don’t want to go to the dance with Spencer, either."

Ryan had to make two attempts at picking up his water glass, after having failed at the task the first time. "Excuse me?" he asked after a beat, and took a gulp.

She rolled her eyes. Spencer looked away. The microwave beeped. She delivered a new plate of food to him, steaming from the top, and herded Jackie out of the room.

"Are you okay?" Spencer asked quietly when they had gone.

Ryan was wolfing down his food, hardly stopping for air, getting sauce on his chin. "Yes," he said.

"Have you eaten anything today?" Spencer asked, looking uneasily at the plate.

"Yes," Ryan said again, and gave him a crooked little smile. "This."

"Why didn’t you eat anything?" Spencer frowned.

Ryan shrugged. "I was busy."

Spencer waited, but Ryan didn’t continue. "Doing what?" he asked finally.

"Cleaning," he said. "It’s kind of funny now that I’m away from the whole thing. I had to clean my room before I was allowed to come over here."

Spencer nodded. "Okay..."

Ryan drank more water. "And then," he took a bite, "I was finished and halfway out the door. I would have been here for lunch, or earlier than that, but then I was asked-"

"Asked?" Spencer cut him off.

"- To take the garbage out, and then I had to pick up the mess in the living room and do the dishes and vacuum, and clean my dad’s room... you don’t even want to know what I found in there. And then I was about to leave again... by then I probably would have made it for dinner, but I was asked-"

"Asked," Spencer said.

"- To clean the bathrooms and organize some shit in the basement and, would you even believe me if I told you, apparently we own three bottles of floor polish at my house?"

Spencer looked at the table and felt insurmountably guilty.

"By then I was really late, but I didn’t want to show up here all dirty and disgusting. I took a quick shower and I would have called but I wasn’t allowed until I was finished, and then I wanted to take a minute to chill out. I don’t know. I think I screamed a lot of obscenities today. It’s also possible I’m now homeless."

"Then stay here," Spencer told him.

"Yeah..." Ryan said, slowing down with his food. "Okay."

"I should have made you go to the dance with someone. You would have had a lot more fun than you will here, and you need to have fun."

He scoffed. "You couldn’t pay me to go there now. I’m exhausted and my feet hurt without dancing getting involved. Besides, you promised you’d do my hair."

Spencer considered pointing out he was quite skilled at braiding, thanks to his sisters, but decided against it. "We’re going to watch movies, actually."

"I brought music," Ryan said. "Look in the bag. I decided today I’m a new person, and the new me needs a different taste in music."

"Movies, then music," Spencer said, and Ryan agreed, and they moved from the dining room to the television room accordingly.

They got through most of one combination horror/action film starring a whole plethora of c-list actors before Ryan began nodding off, and by the time the credits rolled he was practically snoring. Spencer coaxed him awake gently and helped pull him up the stairs, where he collapsed onto the very middle of Spencer’s bed.

"Music time," Ryan mumbled into a pillow, and then, "Time..." His eyes opened again. "What time is it?"

Spencer sat on the floor and began prodding through the contents of Ryan’s bag. "Twelve thirty."

"How is it twelve thirty already?" Ryan asked, trying to sit himself up.

"You didn’t even get here until ten, that’s how," Spencer told him. "Do you have a date or something?"

"Yes," he grinned, "with you. A hair date." He rubbed his eyes. "I’m awake now, I’m totally fucking awake. I am present for the music part." He looked half asleep.

"What should I play?" Spencer asked.

"I have a good one," he said, crawling to the other side of the bed to reach him. "Don’t look."

Spencer sat back and looked at his desk.

"Close them," Ryan demanded.

Spencer rolled his eyes and closed them, crossing his arms indignantly.

Ryan put something in the CD player and found the perfect level of volume that was loud enough to enjoy and quiet enough not to wake anyone else up. "You can open them now," he said. "Know who it is?"

Spencer listened for a while. He wished he knew; he wished he could say he did and start up a riveting conversation about the band, the members, how much better their first record was than all the rest. There were boys in Ryan’s grade who could have those conversations with him, and sometimes they lasted so long Spencer would start daydreaming about frogs and mango smoothies and the day that he no longer had to be Ryan’s musically foolish, baby of a friend. "No," he said.

Ryan wasn’t disappointed; he was proud. He sat up taller and smiled, pleased with himself.

"What do you think they’re doing at the dance?" Spencer asked.

"Nothing, because it’s over." Ryan blinked slowly, heavily, but looked a little like he was past the point of sleep, and that not much could knock him out anymore.

"How many girls do you think will be pregnant when we go back on Monday?"

Ryan laughed. "None of them by us, anyway. Congratulations."

Spencer leaned forward and shook Ryan’s hand in celebration. The second song began and he stood up from the floor.

"Where are you going?" Ryan asked, sounding genuinely worried.

"Nowhere," Spencer assured him simply. He paced the length of the room, trying to decide what to do and where to begin, and eventually gave up on thinking and acted instead.

Ryan stared at him. "What are you doing?"

Spencer closed his eyes. "I’m dancing," he said while he shuffled backwards past Ryan on the bed, doing something that most assuredly looked ridiculous with his arms, which involved snapping.

Ryan must have gone through an intense personal struggle to not laugh, which he did not, audibly, anyway. At a point in the song that swelled with guitars and drums Spencer opened his eyes long enough to grab Ryan by the wrists and pull him up.

He stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor while Spencer flitted about him, holding a hand to his mouth as though Spencer might not notice the embarrassed smile there.

"My mom was right," Spencer said. "I regret it already. I thought it would take ten years, at least."

"I don’t think... that we’re very good at dancing, Spence..." Ryan said.

Spencer put his arms in the air and crashed into the closet door."Have you not been paying attention at all?" he asked, recovering balance. "I’m phenomenal at dancing."

Ryan sighed. Spencer told him to close his eyes, and he obliged, and then there was no stopping either of them. They turned blindly around in circles, tripped over each other’s feet, elbowed each other in the ribs, broke a lamp, and laughed until the CD repeated itself again.

Sometimes they would peek at each other. "Is that fucking Backstreet Boys, Spencer Smith?" Ryan asked on track seven.

"’NSync, actually," Spencer told him, and they Bye-Bye-Byed each other and closed their eyes again.

Ryan peeked again several songs later and caught Spencer trying to Vogue and Moonwalk at the same time, which caused him to double over in laughter. He collapsed onto the bed again and, close to hysterical tears, begged Spencer to stop because he couldn’t take it anymore. "I can’t..." he said, trying to catch his breath, "I’m too tired. Let’s give it a rest, Dancing Queen."

Spencer stared at him. "I wonder if my parents have any ABBA."

Ryan laughed again and hid his face in a pillow, if that was any consolation. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Spencer agreed, leaning against his desk. "Does this mean you didn’t save a slow one for me?" He pretended to look very sad.

Ryan peered up at him with one eye above a mass of pillow. "They’re all saved for you," he said, still laughing.

"Tomorrow," Spencer said. Ryan nodded and yawned and rolled over to face the wall. Spencer turned the lights off, but let the music keep playing. Ryan liked to sleep to music.

Spencer lay down beside him and gave the impression he was going to sleep, but willed himself to stay awake until Ryan’s breathing became soft and shallow and rhythmic. It took another entire run of the CD before it happened, and Spencer wondered what Ryan was thinking about that was keeping him from sleeping for so long. He supposed he would never know. He couldn’t worry about it for too long. He had a plan.

Ryan had perfectly braided pigtails when he woke up in the morning.

\-----

Jon and Spencer’s late night fireside conversation ensured they were the last to finally wake again in the morning. Brendon and Ryan were seated around the fire pit. Brendon was trying to light scraps with his lighter again, but the wind was coming in gusts and throwing him off. Every time he flicked it lit it would go out again and he cursed under his breath. Ryan had an acoustic guitar; the melody coming from which was what had woken Spencer up in the first place. Not that he minded. Before he opened his eyes he decided he never wanted to wake up to any other sound again for the rest of his life. Still, he didn’t even know if Ryan was speaking to him or not.

Spencer was the last to emerge from a tent and Ryan smiled at him as acknowledgment, but said nothing, and kept strumming at his guitar. Spencer decided to sit opposite him, just to be safe, next to Jon. Brendon finally succeeded; he shouted in celebration and hurried to gather the sticks they had used to roast marshmallows.

Jon groaned. "I think I developed diabetes from last night’s dinner, are you honestly telling me marshmallows are your planned breakfast, too?"

Brendon scoffed. "Do you think so little of me? A fully nutritious breakfast awaits you, Jon Walker. Have patience. Take a stick." He handed them out. When he got to Ryan, Ryan gave a little shake of his head. He couldn’t take a stick, he was busy plotting something out on his guitar. Brendon threw it next to Ryan's leg, instead.

Jon gave Spencer a look. Spencer tried to give him a sympathetic one back, but he wanted most of all to talk to Ryan again. Maybe for days, or weeks, or a year. What were they doing? What was expected of him now? What wasn’t he allowed to do?

The stick in his hand moved and he looked down to see Brendon spearing a piece of Wonder Bread with it. He did this again for Jon, and then himself, and placed Ryan’s piece of bread on top of the stick by his leg on the ground. Ryan wrinkled his nose at it.

"Observe," Brendon told them. He thrust his bread on a stick toward the fire. "Step one." When it turned golden brown, he retracted it and blew on it to cool it down."Step two," he continued, and took a bite. "Step three. Go ahead and try."

"Are you..." Jon said, incapable of finishing the sentence in his disbelief. "What all did you bring, exactly? Marshmallows and bread?"

"I have trail mix," Spencer offered.

"We’re going to die out here," Jon stated. "They’ll find us in a year, starved to death and ten pounds heavier at the same time."

"Toast is a perfectly acceptable breakfast food, Jon," Brendon told him. "And, in some cultures, marshmallows are a perfectly acceptable dinner food."

"I’m going to go hunt something, or something. What do you think we can hunt?" Jon asked, looking at Spencer.

"You are not going to hunt for shit!" Brendon yelled, as if Jon actually possessed the skills necessary do it anyway.

Spencer squinted over the open terrain. Not a single living thing was in sight, not even a spider, anymore. "Quail," he decided.

Ryan snorted.

"A nice quail breakfast, that’s what I want," Jon smiled. Brendon looked like he was going to be sick. "Sprinkle a little quail meat over my toast. Quail sandwich."

Brendon exhaled slowly. The remainder of his toast fell apart and dropped into the dirt. He frowned at it a little mournfully.

"We are literally the worst campers that have ever been idiotic enough to try," Jon said, giving up and holding out his own bread to toast.

"Guys," Ryan said suddenly and loudly. It startled all three of them. They turned to stare. Jon’s bread became engrossed in flames a moment later. He threw it, stick and all, into the fire to disintegrate.

"I know what our next record is going to be," Ryan said.

Their expressions were unchanging. Spencer had to squint. He was the only one without sunglasses.

Ryan looked down at his guitar, perhaps for reassurance, and then back to them. "I do, though."

A log in the fire snapped. Brendon sniffed. Jon scratched his ear.

"The problem is... we aren’t at home. We have to go home." Ryan looked at Spencer when he said this.

"Yes!" Jon exclaimed, standing up immediately, and then he sat back down again, crossing his legs politely. "Wait, when?"

"Like, as soon as possible," Ryan answered.

"Yes!" Jon said, and stood again. "Is now too soon?"

Spencer laughed at him.

Eventually Brendon caught on to the excitement. "I had this idea, you know, before we came out here, I was thinking how rad it would be to record at the Palms."

And then everything skidded abruptly to a halt. Spencer’s heart skipped and his smile disappeared. He looked at Brendon, wondering if he could possibly be serious.

Ryan gaped at Brendon too, but he looked thrilled about it. "Brendon!" he yelled. "The Palms?"

"Yeah!" Brendon exclaimed, bouncing his knees. "I researched it out and everything, it’s fucking amazing in there. I kind of went on a tour already and told them we’d be back soon. Well, that was last month, but I’m sure they haven’t given up on us yet."

"Brendon!" Ryan said again, looking at him like he was a genius. "That’s practically the epitome of Vegas."

"It is exactly the epitome of Vegas," Brendon corrected him.

"We’d be up to our eyeballs in being at home," Ryan grinned.

"And actual food," Jon said. "And actual beds."

"We can stay there, you know, they have suites. We could, like..."

"Live at the studio," Ryan finished for him, excited. "And promise not to leave until the record’s completed."

"We’d be done in no time," Jon said, sounded pleased.

"We could leave... sometimes..." Spencer interjected quietly.

They looked at him like they had forgotten he had still been sitting there. Ryan was confused for a second but recovered quickly. "Yeah," he said, "of course we could. But it would make everything so much easier. If we got an idea at four in the morning, we’d be there already to record it."

"It’s perfect, right?" Brendon smiled wide, and Jon laughed, and Ryan hadn’t looked so happy in months. Spencer swallowed air and forced himself to smile along with them.

"I guess your camping trip was a success, Brendon," Spencer said as composedly as he could muster.

Brendon shrugged."Did you ever doubt me?"

Jon declared they gather their things and leave at once. He wanted to be back in the city before lunch time. He was sunburned, he said. Ryan agreed, eager to begin the details of really reserving rehearsal space and a suite for the band. He wanted to contact the record label. He had things to do. Only Brendon had a qualm.

"I paid for the whole weekend, you know," he said.

"I will pay you three times as much to leave," Jon said, and that settled it.

While they hiked back to their cars, lugging belongings on their backs, Jon and Brendon went out of their way to distance themselves from Ryan and Spencer as much as possible, in case they wanted to talk. Spencer would have, but he didn't know what to say, and Ryan kept quiet anyway. They looked at each other sometimes; sometimes even Ryan started it. He'd make a whole show of turning his head, straining his neck, just to look at Spencer, and then look away again and say nothing. It seemed as though he was waiting for something. Spencer knew what Ryan was waiting for, but he couldn't help him. He didn't know how.

Jon handed out keys, apologizing to Ryan and Spencer for lying to them about their whereabouts. Ryan and Spencer were already long over it, and forgave him easily. Brendon and Jon hastened to get out of earshot again, so that Spencer and Ryan could say goodbye to each other. Spencer wondered for a moment if Ryan wouldn't say goodbye at all, while he stood there and looked at him, still waiting. Spencer still couldn't say what he needed to hear. Ryan dropped his bag finally and wrapped his arms around Spencer's neck.

"Goodbye," Ryan said into Spencer's hair.

Spencer held him tight. "It's not like I'm not going to see you for a long time, or anything." He hesitated and then decided to act on a momentary inspiration of boldness. "We could even have dinner tonight."

Ryan sighed and pulled away. His sunglasses were slipping down the bridge of his nose; he pushed them farther up. "I don't know. Maybe." He frowned at the sun. "I don't know."

"Why not?" Spencer pleaded with him.

Ryan looked at him again. "If I go with you to dinner, are you going to tell me at dinner?"

"I don't know," he said, for something to say, and then decided to stop lying to him. "No."

Ryan shook his head. He gave Spencer a moment to redeem himself, to change his mind, but Spencer did nothing. Ryan picked up his bag and made towards his car. "I'll see you soon. The next record..." He paused, unlocking the door. "Well, I'll see you at work."


	5. Chapter 5

Spencer jammed a finger in each ear. That effectively smothered all noise, but he still heard the thwack of the bowling ball hitting the lane and whir as it rolled towards the pins. After four weeks in this damn place, he heard that noise in his dreams. If they ever left, he'd never go bowling again.

Brendon got a strike. He leaped in the air. Jon applauded halfheartedly. The neon lighting on the back wall flashed. It had become somewhat anticlimactic. Spencer couldn't remember why he'd ever thought a hotel suite with a bowling alley was a good idea.

"If we don't get this album finished, I'm going to abandon my dreams of a career in music and become a professional bowler," said Brendon.

Jon snorted. "Last week you were going to pursue your ambition of becoming a hand model."

"That's on my list too," Brendon said. He flopped onto the purple couch. "If the bowling gig doesn't work out." He rolled over onto his stomach. He kicked his feet against the cushions three times. "It doesn't matter," he said, petulantly. "Ryan is killing all of my dreams."

"He's killing everyone's dreams," Jon said. "Pete's getting pissed. We're going to be out on our asses if we don't have something to show him soon."

Spencer's phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and silenced it. Jon and Brendon stared.

"It was just ..." he said. "It was no one."

Brendon frowned. Jon pretended to play with the remote for the TV.

"Should we get room service?" Brendon said. He grabbed his laptop from the side table and pulled up the menu, even though they all knew it by heart.

Jon groaned. "I never thought I'd say this but I'd be happy never to eat anything but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and corn flakes again."

"Bleah," said Brendon. "This place is draining me of my vital energy." He slid from the couch onto the floor. "Spencer, go get Ryan out of the studio. It's time for a powwow."

"He won't listen to me," Spencer said.

"He's just as likely to listen to you as he is --"

Spencer's phone rang again. He jumped.

"Maybe you ought to -" Jon said.

"It's just my mom!" Spencer said, too loudly. He stood. "I'm going ... um. I'll be right back."

The bedrooms were all down one long hall. Brendon's was at the end, the only room with a balcony. He always got the best hotel rooms. Spencer had volunteered to take the smallest. He'd let the place lapse into squalor. The entire suite would be approaching unlivable if the maids didn't come every morning. He threw his phone on the desk. He thought of throwing it in the toilet, then reconsidered. They knew his name; they didn't need his phone number.

He checked his messages. He listened to five seconds of the first, cursed, and deleted it. The second was the same, and the third. He couldn't listen any further. He snapped shut his phone.

"Fuck," he muttered.

Eight days ago he'd been a little crazy, a little stir-crazy, and he'd taken Jon's car and he'd left the resort. He had needed to leave. Ryan had them all in the studio fourteen hours a day. It was worse than when they recorded the first album. He went to sleep with cramped shoulders and sore wrists. And Ryan ... Ryan was a perfect gentleman in the studio, but he hadn't said a word to Spencer not directly related to the music. Sometimes Spencer saw Ryan watching him with a soft look in his eyes, but that was all ... and that could have been Spencer's overactive imagination at work. He felt sick. That day he felt he would end up putting his fist through the screen of a television set or through a wall. Brendon's sloppy handwriting made him shake with irrational anger. He'd had to leave.

He'd driven mindlessly, obeying traffic law but steering no clear course. The sun set and the sky turned the orange color of a creamsicle. Spencer hoped it was not a hallucination. He was on a highway, south of town. He stopped at a bar, not a nice place, but there were plenty of cars outside. The windows were painted over. He didn't even stop to think that he was under age. With the new beard and the fake ID, he never got carded, at least not in Vegas. It was dark inside. A woman with vulgar bulging breasts danced in only a purple G string and tasseled pasties. Spencer felt a little bad that he didn't blush or even look twice. His mother would be horrified if she knew what a degenerate he'd become.

He took a seat at the end of the bar. The bartender had a grey ponytail and an earring in one ear. He took his time coming over. Spencer ordered a Coors Light. He left a ten dollar tip. People crowded around a bank of televisions. A few played darts at the end of the room. Spencer drank his beer. It was not cold and it was flat. It was nearly undrinkable, but that was a good thing. He couldn't get so drunk that he couldn't drive back.

When he was done with his beer he laid his head on the bar. It was a little sticky. Brendon had been going on and on the other day about flesh eating bacteria in Nevada's hospitals. The thought crossed Spencer's mind that perhaps he ought to be more careful. He didn't have the energy to care. This wasn't want he'd wanted. Very soon he'd need to go back to the studio. It had seemed like Disney World when they'd arrived. Now it was like a prison. This place was no respite.

The bartender tapped him on the head. Spencer was strangely offended.

"You had too much to drink?" the man asked.

"No," Spencer said. "Just the one beer."

"Hm," said the man. "Bar's for drinking, not sleeping."

"Okay," Spencer said. "That's true."

He ordered another beer and got up. The dart players were a tight knit group. Even when Spencer stood and awkwardly stared they did not offer to let him play. He wandered over to the crowd by the televisions. It was three deep. On the screens, men were pummeling each other. Boxing. They were betting on fights. Spencer's mouth went dry. His shoulders clenched. He had two hundred dollars in his pocket.

He struck up a conversation with a man named Seth in a tweed sports jacket. Seth was an actuary. Spencer didn't have a fucking clue what that meant. He got another beer and listened to Seth explain the art of boxing. It didn't make any sense. Seth admitted in a conspiratorial tone that he preferred betting on the dogs. Spencer's mother had raised him with the understanding that greyhound racing was inhumane. He'd never been to a racetrack before. He was not inclined to look kindly on those who had.

He bet a hundred dollars. He didn't know on who. He didn't know the rules of the game. He dug out his wallet and got out his money and handed it over. Something light and wonderful filled him. There was nothing he could do. The man in the red satin shorts hit the man with the blue satin shorts and a splatter of blood stained the canvas mat. The man with the blue shorts staggered and fell. The bout was over. The crowd yelled and surged. The man at the bank window regarded them all coolly. Spencer closed his eyes. In a moment, Seth was back. Spencer won back twice what he'd bet.

That was the intoxicating thing. That's when things got bad. Spencer bet more. He didn't have the cash. He mentioned who he was, mentioned the band. Someone's teenage daughter was a fan. Spencer autographed a cocktail napkin. He wrote a personal check. They had a policy against checks, but Spencer was a celebrity. He kept drinking. The dollar amounts mentioned increased. It was dizzying.

Someone put him in a cab that night. He woke up very early in the morning on the floor of his room. He had no memory of coming home, but there was a pack of matches in his pocket. He called the concierge and ordered a car to come take him to get Jon's car. He was back before anyone else woke.

The next day, the calls started.

Of course they had. He owed money. He did not have it. Money went so quickly. Ten grand one night playing craps at the Luxor. Fifteen another playing poker. A few of the casinos knew Spencer now. Overly gracious men in suits greeted him when he walked in. They knew he spent money freely. That was enough. They didn't want to see him win.

He did not have the money. It wasn't so much that he needed, just a few grand, but he didn't have it. The voice of the man that left the messages was not a pleasant voice. It was not a kind voice. He mentioned dates. One of the dates might have been the day following next. That was too soon. Spencer wouldn't have any money by then. He might not have any money anytime soon. He'd driven home last week to get the savings bonds his grandmother gave him for college. College was half a joke now. That money was gone already.

His skin itched. His head ached. He was ill. He would grow his beard out and cut his hair short and take a bus to Montana and find work at a ranch. They still had ranches in Montana, he was fairly sure. But that was ridiculous. He couldn't go to Montana, and he didn't want to cut his hair. He'd showered when he'd woken up that morning, but he felt filthy. He scratched his scalp. He wasn't drunk, wasn't high, but he felt off. It was a strange feeling; it was like he didn't know his own mind.

In the bathroom he stripped and turned on the hot water. He stepped into the shower. The water was scalding. Clouds of steam billowed. He could buy scratch offs. He won money on those. He often won money on those. But he didn't even have the money for a scratch off. He was fucked. It wasn't fair. The others had money. Jon had money to get his car fixed. Brendon had money for his fucking new computer. He could ask Brendon for a loan. No, he'd never be able to do that. Brendon knew. Brendon had to know, and yet Spencer couldn't ask him.

He would pawn his watch. It was a nice watch. He didn't know how much he'd get for it. Almost certainly not enough. What else could he sell? Shoes? No, no one would buy his shoes. There was nothing. He had nothing. He wasn't Brendon. He didn't have stupid gadgets he'd forget about in a few months. Brendon didn't even take care of his stuff. He only had a new laptop because he'd spilled a bowl of cup noodles on his last. If Brendon broke this computer ... if this computer were stolen or lost, Brendon would just buy another. Spencer took excellent care of all his things.

Spencer sank to the floor of the shower. His skin felt raw, scoured. He had no choices. These things happened and he made them go away, but this time he had no options. His skin pruned. Someone pounded on the door of his room. He heard his phone ring three more times, but he stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, and even then he was loathe to get out.

\-----

The alarm on Spencer’s phone went off, jolting him out of the half-sleep he’d been in, sitting at a vanity mirror with the lights off in the depths of a venue somewhere in Chicago. He had been leaning into his hand and getting dangerously close to drooling. There were fingernail marks in his chin and he tried to rub them away before hauling himself up and out the door.

They had finished the show three hours ago and were waiting for the set to be taken down, for lights to be carried out, for instruments to be safely stored into trailers. Jon was ecstatic as always. It was the second show in Chicago since he’d been with them, and, same as last time, he announced his official "two hour and forty five minute party at Jon’s apartment." Last time the whole band went and things ended badly. Everyone except Jon had something of a horror story to tell about what happened to them, separately, that night. Spencer’s side of things had mostly involved standing in a room of people older than him, who both didn’t know him and seemed to resent him at exactly the same time. He remembered the awkwardness and politely declined Jon’s Chicago Party, Part Two. Brendon, unsurprisingly, declined it as well, on the grounds that he was hungry and just wanted to find a place to eat a late-night dinner. A few people from the opening bands volunteered to go with him. Ryan, surprisingly, agreed to go with Jon. Brendon and Spencer were confused but didn’t have the heart to say anything. They parted ways as soon as the show was over, and Spencer fell asleep in his chair.

His alarm signified that they had twenty minutes to be back on the bus or all hell would break loose. If they were late back onto the bus, they would be late coming into the next city, and late for sound check, and then the show would have to start late, and then it might go past curfew, and then they would be in debt thousands of dollars, look completely unprofessional, and never be allowed to play in that city again. The crew took this deadline very seriously; the band pretended to.

Zack was standing outside the bus door in a big coat, looking stern. Snow was falling in wet clumps and the wind blew in gusts. "Number one," he said to Spencer. Spencer rolled his eyes. He wondered if, maybe one day, he might not be the first one back.

The bus was warm and bright inside; completely empty. Spencer stretched out on one of the sofas in the lounge and closed his eyes again. The silence, and the first pick of seating, was his only consolation for being lame that night. He heard Zack say, "Two," and a clatter of footsteps and a thud of weight fall into the other sofa. He opened his eyes a sliver to peek. It was Jon. He had his eyes closed, as well. He looked exhausted.

"How are you?" Spencer asked him.

Jon smiled without looking at him. "Good. Sad. Awesome."

Spencer nodded and rolled over. "Yeah," he said, and, without meaning to, fell asleep.

When he woke up again it was with another jolt. The sound of the bus revving to life had ripped him from his dream and frightened him completely. His heart pounded. He looked around with wide eyes and tried to catch his breath. No one seemed to notice. Zack was inside now, his phone pressed to his ear, sitting at the table they were meant to eat meals at but never used. Their driver was a dark mass in the front, jingling keys. Jon was asleep.

Spencer sat up all the way and rubbed his eyes hard, trying to get a hold on himself. His fingers trembled. Zack shut his phone and threw it onto the table, making an infuriated grumble. Spencer looked at the clock. It was twenty minutes past one in the morning. Brendon and Ryan were twenty minutes late.

They woke Jon up and Zack demanded to know why Ryan didn’t come back with him, considering they were together at some point. "I didn’t know I was supposed to baby sit him," was Jon’s answer. Spencer felt the urge to get into a fistfight with Jon for that, but kept himself composed. Jon apologized. "I don’t know, he was talking to a group of people early on and then I didn’t really see him the rest of the night. I thought he might already be back."

"Am I supposed to drive to every open restaurant in Illinois to find Brendon, and then search every street for Ryan?" Zack asked no one in particular. "It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if you guys would answer your god damned phones when I call you."

Spencer felt uneasy. "Neither one of them are answering their phones?" he asked.

Another ten minutes passed. Jon and Zack tried calling Brendon and Ryan so many times it might have been considered harassment in court. Spencer sent five text messages to Brendon and thirty to Ryan, but received no response. On one hand, it was only half an hour, but looked at a different way, none of them had ever been more than five minutes late for a work-imposed curfew, except Brent, who didn’t even count. The snow outside was amounting to something of a blizzard.

When forty-five minutes had gone by, Zack started talking about calling the police. Spencer had heard on cop drama television programs that missing people couldn’t be reported until they were gone for twenty-four hours, but still, the talk unsettled him even further. It didn’t make any sense that Brendon and Ryan were both gone, and they hadn’t even been together in the first place. It didn’t make any sense that neither would answer their phones. The only safe explanation available was that both had lost track of the time, and both of their phone batteries had died while they were out. Spencer very much doubted the odds were good for something like that to happen. It would have to be an outrageous coincidence.

Eventually, the three of them stopped trying to call and set the ringers to their own phones as loudly as they would go. They set all three on the table and watched them with anxiety. They fell into silence in their worry, with nothing to be heard except the roar of the bus engine and the jangling keys.

At a quarter past two o’clock, there was a loud thump against the bus door. Zack rushed to open it and Spencer rushed to see out the window. The snow was too thick, and he was too far back. The angle was wrong. Ryan’s head appeared in the entranceway first, though he was hardly recognizable. At the show he had sported some kind of red and black makeup design that he’d apparently worn to the party afterwards. Either someone had thrown their drink in his face, or he had been outside in the snow for a long time, because he had smears of red and black streaming down his face. It had dripped and landed on the white shirt he wore, giving it a permanent stain. If someone didn’t know, they might think it was blood and dirt. Spencer hoped blood and dirt wasn’t mixed in there somewhere. His eyes were half closed and he had a strange smirk on his face. His head lolled around like he had no control over it at all, and he tripped over his own feet. Spencer stared at him.

"Spencer!" Brendon yelled, and then appeared behind Ryan. Brendon had his hands on Ryan’s hips and was steering him around, forcing him to take steps by pushing him forward. Brendon was wet too, and snowflakes stuck in his hair and his eyelashes, but he looked considerably more alive and lucid than Ryan was.

"What?" Spencer said, but hardly any noise came from him. His voice stuck in his throat. He wanted to go to them and help them but he couldn’t move.

"This thing wants you," Brendon answered, and practically threw Ryan at him. Ryan landed in a crumpled heap of limbs on his lap. He resituated himself in an instant, thrusting his arms into Spencer’s sweatshirt and rather inappropriately pulled Spencer’s tee shirt up until Ryan had his cold hands on the warm bare skin of Spencer’s back. He trembled in Spencer’s arms. He was soaking wet and freezing. Up close, his lips were tinged in blue. He hid his face against part of Spencer’s shoulder and part of the sofa, getting makeup all over both.

"What the fuck happened?" several people said at the same time Brendon said, "Let me tell you what the fuck just happened."

Brendon was livid. He paced back and forth, up and down the aisle of the bus, fuming while he spoke. "I had dinner, I saw the snow, I knew I had to get back, so I called a cab. I would have been fucking early!" He looked at Zack, and repeated, "Early! So the cab comes, people are getting in, and there’s this homeless dude across the street, drunk as fuck, on God knows what, stumbling around in the snow without a coat, in socks! And he starts shouting my name at me, and I’m terrified; I think he’s been stalking me, and he starts coming at me and laughing like a maniac. I think I’m about to be killed, and then I realize it’s not just any homeless dude, it’s Ryan fucking Ross."

Spencer shifted to look at Ryan’s feet. He really was only wearing socks, but they were filthy and soaked all the way through. Little pebbles and chunks of ice clung to them. Spencer pulled them off for him, deciding they were doing worse for him than any better.

"And, like anyone would do, I tell him he’s a fucking idiot and ask what he’s doing. He still hasn’t given me any explicit answer except something about a bad hook up, how he’s convinced someone spiked his drink, and someone named Cody that I’m not entirely sure is even a chick."

"They spiked my drink," Ryan mumbled against Spencer. "Or..." He paused. Everyone waited for him to finish. "Or they didn’t."

Brendon rolled his eyes. "He said he left his jacket and his shoes in Cody’s room, and I’m like, where the fuck is that? Because at this point we still have time, I’m thinking we can go back and get them, and he’s just like, Cody’s room this, Cody’s room that. He had to get out of Cody’s room, so he just walked out and wandered aimlessly around Chicago and found me."

Spencer’s heart began to beat faster. He didn’t know if he was angry or terrified, or both. He looked at Jon. "Who is Cody?" Spencer asked.

Jon shrugged. "I don’t think I know a Cody."

Ryan mumbled something incoherent, and then, "Toby."

"Oh," Jon said. Spencer scowled at him. "Toby Brower, he’s a drummer in a local band I used to hang out with."

They all stared at him. He put his hands up in defense. "I didn’t even invite him. We don’t talk anymore. Someone else must have brought him."

Zack grasped the opportunity for an exit. "We’re leaving," he said, and went to sit at the front.

"Anyway," Brendon continued, "I help Ryan into the taxi, and start to get in after him. Things would have been perfect after that, but then the taxi driver starts screaming at me to get out, because no more than four people can be in his cab at once. So I ask him if he can call another one for me, and he says no, and I say fine, I’ll call one myself, you guys can go ahead, but Ryan has attached himself to me so he gets out too, and waits with me. The taxi leaves, I get my phone out, and it’s dead. I tell Ryan to give me his phone, and he goes off on another tangent about Cody-Toby again, and I eventually realize his phone is wherever his jacket and shoes are. So we try to go back into the restaurant, but they’ve fucking closed and locked the door on us." Brendon stopped to catch his breath. Jon and Spencer stared at him. Everyone felt guilty for everyone else. "So we walked back," Brendon finished. "And no, I didn’t know where I was going."

Spencer didn’t want to leave it at that. His heart was still racing to make up for the things he wasn’t shouting at Ryan. Brendon went to change his clothes and wrap himself in every blanket on the bus. Spencer rolled Ryan around so he could look him in the eyes, for as long as Ryan could keep his eyes open.

"What happened?" Spencer demanded of him.

"I met Co... Toby," Ryan said. "We had a promenade."

"You marched with him?" Spencer asked, trying keep his voice calm.

"No," Ryan said. "I mean... a rendezvous."

"A meeting?" Spencer asked.

Ryan laughed. "Okay, sexual relations."

Spencer didn’t say anything. Brendon had already kind of warned him of this in his speech, but Ryan actually admitting it himself made it worse than Spencer had been prepared for.

Ryan glared at him. "Don’t be weird, it’s not 1925."

"I didn’t say anything," Spencer told him.

"Yeah, exactly," Ryan said.

Spencer pushed him off his lap, but caught him again before he fell. He helped drag him to the little bathroom at the end of the bus. He wet a washcloth and tried to wipe the grime and makeup off his face. Stripes of Ryan became visible again as he went. He couldn’t breathe properly, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Ryan sat on the sink and kicked his feet like a child with a smirk on his lips. He leaned his head against the mirror. "Let it out, Spence."

"What do you want me to say, Ryan?" Spencer yelled immediately. "You could have died. You could have gotten lost and frozen to death with no fucking shoes on."

"I was warm until I got to Brendon," he said, still smiling. Spencer wanted to smack it off of him. He tried to wipe it off instead. He left Ryan’s skin pink where the washcloth had been.

"You can’t just start sleeping with random people, either," Spencer said, his jaw tight.

"You’re a few years too late, Spencer," Ryan said.

Spencer glared at him. "You know you can actually choose to sleep with people who care about you, who won’t spike your drinks and steal your shit and send you out into blizzards alone. I think they’re called relationships."

Ryan laughed. "How adorable."

Spencer threw the cloth at him. Most of Ryan’s face had come clean. It was good enough. "I’m going to bed," Spencer said, halfway in his bunk before he had finished saying it. He couldn’t stand the sight of Ryan anymore.

Indeed, the year was not 1925. The fact didn’t help Spencer to not have a miniature panic attack in his bunk at the thought of Ryan sleeping with another guy. What was Spencer supposed to have noticed about Ryan that would have led him to such a conclusion before he said it out loud? They had lived through practically identical childhoods together. Different people treated them differently along the way, but they both knew everything about each other. There had never been a single secret between them... at least until they started to get a little bit older and a little bit better known. Spencer wouldn’t have minded if Ryan would have told him in a better context than, "you’re a few years too late." People don’t do things like that to their best friends; they don’t do something completely unexpected and then laugh when their friend doesn’t already know about it. How was Spencer supposed to know?

But maybe it wasn’t so unexpected. Ryan was never exactly the picture of beer drinking, barbecue party throwing, Hooters' patron masculinity. Especially after he graduated high school, he nearly became a gender of his own, if not an entire species. That didn’t matter, it was just Ryan becoming at one with his inner creative-minded individual. The clothes and makeup were there to counteract the sweater vests he had to wear in high school. He was a unique creature, unaffected by social rules, but that didn’t mean...

Spencer leaned his head against the back wall of the bus. It ached. Ryan finally emerged from the bathroom and went to bed himself, without telling anyone. Brendon and Jon were watching television in the lounge; Brendon was still complaining of the unfortunate turn his night had taken. Maybe Spencer didn’t care so much about Ryan's choice of companions. The longer the knowledge sat in his mind, the less it troubled him. The only trouble he had, really, was that it seemed to put Ryan at a disadvantage. If he didn’t refuse half of the world’s population, then there was really no consenting adult alive that Ryan wouldn’t theoretically have sex with. That was a lot of competition.

Spencer’s eyes opened of their own accord. Competition? Why did he just think competition? He decided he knew why he thought of competition, it was because if Ryan was going to be having so many one night stands with people, he’d have a lot less time to be friends with Spencer. They wouldn’t be able to have Spencer and Ryan Taco Tuesday, or Spencer and Ryan Find the Tackiest Postcard in the Gas Station Time, or Spencer and Ryan Start a Secret Guns n’ Roses Tribute Band Time.

It was not, in any case, because Spencer wanted to sleep with Ryan. Even if Spencer wasn’t a Hooters' patron either, it didn’t mean he wanted to sleep with other guys. Even if he was drunk, and it was a party, and he was rebelling against sweater vests. And even if he did, he wouldn’t want to sleep with Ryan. Ryan was practically his brother. Well, Spencer never really considered Ryan to be his brother. Ryan was more like his other half, in a non-romantic sort of way. And people just didn’t sleep with their other halves. That would be ridiculous. He smiled to himself. Ridiculous. Contented, he fell asleep.

\----

"We thought you were trying to drown yourself," Brendon said.

"Or that you'd passed out," Jon said. He grinned. He sat with his feet propped on the coffee table.

"No," Spencer said. "No. I was just ... I needed to think."

"Oh," Brendon said. He turned his attention back to the television. They were watching the Disney Channel. Brendon would probably start singing along any second. That irrational urge was back. The air felt as thick as plastic. They'd ordered food. A half eaten slice of quiche and a watery tomato sat on a plate littered with crumbs. It turned Spencer's stomach.

"Did Ryan come back?" Spencer asked.

"Nope," Brendon said. "We may never see him again."

Spencer sat down. All of this -- plasma screen televisions, leather couches, recording studios, casino suites -- was garish scenery. They weren't here for this. They were supposed to be recording music. They were supposed to be making something, but they were getting nowhere.

"We're going to go down to the bar for a while," Jon said.

"Oh," Spencer said.

Brendon sat up. "Come with us," he said. "Let's all go. Maybe we can even get Ryan to come too."

"No," Spencer said. "I don't feel very well."

They both looked at him strangely. He couldn't decipher their expressions. He blinked.

"Maybe you should go lie down," Jon said, gently.

"Yeah," Spencer said. He stood. There was a moment of initial vertigo, and he felt his pulse pounding in his face. He wavered. Everything was faint and light. Brendon was at his side in a moment.

"Don't fall," Brendon said. "I don't want you concussed, Spencer Smith."

They helped him to his room. He lay flat on the bed. His hair was still damp and it got his pillow wet. Jon sat with him while Brendon got him a juice box. The juice made him feel a little better. He hadn't eaten anything since dinner the night before. Brendon wanted to call a doctor. Spencer insisted he was fine. Jon hardly said a word. He told them to go down to the bar; he would rest. Brendon was stubborn. Spencer just wanted to sleep. He refused to say another word. Brendon's protestations grew less forceful. Spencer closed his eyes and was still. Brendon sighed. They left, and shut the door softly.

Then everything was quiet. For a long time he waited to fall asleep, but sleep was elusive. He heard other doors open and close. He heard the water rush through the pipes. It was not very quiet at all. His room had no windows. It might have been morning or midnight. He had to do something. That was why sleep would not come. His mind raced. He had to find some acceptable solution. He'd heard things - they broke bones, they beat people. They might break every bone in his face. They might break all his fingers. He didn't fear the pain, but if that happened there would be no plausible explanation except the truth. That was what scared him. If they knew, if Ryan knew, how Spencer had betrayed their confidence, they would never grant him the same trust again.

He sat up. The beige walls and bland tasteful art on the walls were infuriating. He wanted to be home, but it would be no better there. His mother had turned his bedroom into a study three months before. She had called and asked and Spencer had agreed it was a sensible thing to do. He hadn't stayed at home for more than a week or two in a year and a half. He was thinking a getting a place of his own. He kept up that ruse, pretending to be demanding and particular when realtors showed him condos he couldn't hope to afford.

Halfheartedly, he started to tidy up. He folded clean clothes and laid them neatly in their drawers. He put soiled clothes in the hamper. He hung up his damp towels and wiped down the bathroom. It went too quickly. In twenty minutes everything was clean. He could go watch television, although there was likely nothing on. That seemed worse than trying to sleep. He could go to the studio. Ryan would be there. Even now, being near Ryan was a kind of a solace and a torture simultaneously. If Ryan was not there, he could practice what they'd been working on.

None of that would do anything to fix his problem. He couldn't stay in his room a moment longer. The living room was bigger. Picture windows looked out over the strip. He felt the pressure in his chest relax. Newspapers were strewn over the table. He made them into a pile and left them by the garbage. He gathered all the crusted dishes and cups. Someone would take them away. Ryan's notebooks and a pair of his sunglasses were on the floor. Spencer stacked them on the counter. He couldn't bring himself to go in Ryan's room. Brendon had five sweatshirts and three pairs of shoes in the living room. Spencer tossed them in a heap. Things were starting to come together. It worried him that he found cleaning so soothing. His mother always cleaned when she was upset. That was not a consoling thought. He wanted a vacuum. Maybe he'd call room service and see if they'd send one up. It was probably far from the strangest request they'd had that night. Brendon's stuff still sat in the middle of the floor. Spencer picked up the whole pile.

He nudged open the door to Brendon's room with his foot. It was dark. The blinds were closed. Spencer hit the light switch with his elbow. It was more of a mess in there than it had been in the living room. You couldn't see a square inch of carpet. Spencer dropped the mess on the bed. He pulled open the blinds. The door to the balcony was open. He stepped outside. All of Vegas was alight. From twenty stories up, it looked tiny and too neat, like a toy city. It was probably beautiful, but he was numb to it. That postcard image was one he'd seen innumerable times. He didn't blame Brendon for shutting it out. Instead he looked west to the mountains and the rising moon.

Maybe he would straighten up for Brendon. He probably owed him at least that much. He folded all the sweatshirts he'd dropped on the bed. He kicked most of the clothing gently into one heap, picking out copies of the National Enquirer and Starbursts wrappers. More clothes were shoved under the bed. He shouldn't have had to do any of this. The hotel was responsible for housecleaning. That was in the contract they'd signed for the rooms. Spencer had read it over. And Brendon wasn't a child. He was slovenly in retaliation. Spencer had been to Brendon's parents' house. It looked like the set of a sitcom. There was a cheerful cross-stitch sign in the foyer asking everyone to remove their shoes. You could eat breakfast off of the kitchen floor.

A jumble of papers fell out of the pocket of a pair of jeans. Spencer picked it up and unfolded it. It was nothing -- stars and scribbles on a scrap of notebook paper, and ... and two crumpled fifty dollar bills. Spencer wasn't surprised. He shouldn't have been surprised. Brendon didn't use a wallet. It was something of a joke. Someone bought him one for Christmas every year, but he would never use it. He kept his money wadded in his pockets. Doing wash for Brendon was as likely as not to net you a tidy profit. For that reason they'd forbid him from ever sending his laundry out while on tour. Laundromats fleeced him blind.

Brendon would never know. He didn't keep track of his money. He would never know. It could have been the maids. Everyone knew hotel maids stole. Once in Florida someone had taken a silk scarf, a box of Girl Scout cookies, and a watch from Ryan's room. They'd complained to the hotel management who insisted that their staff was of impeccable character and suggested Ryan look through his luggage again. Things did have a way of getting lost while traveling.

He stood with the money in his hand for a long time. Then he took his own wallet from his back pocket, opened it, and slipped the bills inside. He put his wallet away and kept cleaning. He found another forty dollars. He took it. It wasn't stealing. It wasn't that. It couldn't be with Brendon. If he'd asked, Brendon would have given him the money. If Brendon cared, he'd be more careful. He'd left the door to his balcony open. Someone could have robbed him. There were balconies above and below. Someone could have climbed down and snuck in and taken everything: the fancy computer, his iPod, jewelry, money. Spencer had seen at least three dozen movies where that exact thing had happened. It wouldn't be very difficult. It wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

Spencer stood very still. It would be easy. It would be too easy to unfold the clothes and knock over the lamp and tip over the dresser and loot the place. He could take it all; nobody would suspect him. He could take it and sell it and pay his debt and nobody would know. He'd say he put in ear plugs. He'd say he slept all night. He'd claim to have heard nothing. Ryan would chide Brendon for his carelessness. Brendon might cry. He did sometimes, with startling ease. Spencer would console him. Spencer would rub Brendon's shoulders and tell him everything was alright. He'd sit with Brendon while the police came. He'd sit by his side as he gave a statement. They would probably ask him for a statement too. Spencer would explain how he'd been in Brendon's room folding the sweatshirts, but he didn't notice the door to the balcony was open. He'd still felt sick, so he'd put in ear plugs and he'd gone to sleep. That was what he'd say. They'd believe it. They had no reason not to.

He did feel sick. His stomach churned but he felt the same rush that came when he was about to roll a pair of dice. A chance had presented itself. He would do the best he could. So much was up to fate. Brendon kept money in an envelop in the bottom of his backpack. Spencer upended it. Out fell colored pencils and bits of paper, magazines and chapstick. Brendon was a packrat. He had so much shit. Spencer groped in the bottom for the envelope. There it was, folded and fat. They all told Brendon it was a bad idea to carry so much cash. He always shrugged and said he didn't mind. He had some prejudice against credit cards he'd inherited from his father.

Spencer unfolded the envelope and fanned the bills inside. Five hundred dollars in twenties. It wasn't enough, but it was something. It would be something. It would buy him time. Spencer's eyes were watering. He didn't know why. He shook. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong but he didn't know how else to get himself out of this situation, clean and free. He didn't have any other options.

The door opened slowly. The hinges squeaked. Spencer froze.

"What are you doing?" someone said.

Spencer turned. It was Ryan.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he asked again. His face was expressionless.

"I was cleaning up," Spencer said. The money was still in his hand. "I was ..."

"Spencer," Ryan said. His spoke with a composure that seemed artificial. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I told you," he said. His voice broke. He couldn't help it. His throat was tight and his eyes stung. "I'm cleaning up Brendon's roo--"

"Spencer," Ryan said again. "What are you doing with Brendon's money?"

"I was just ..." There was nothing he could say.

"Spence," Ryan said softly. "What's going on?" He stepped into the room. He wore a big shapeless tee shirt from the animal hospital he'd worked at senior year over pajama pants. He looked tired, and young.

"I was just going through his laundry," he said. "Brendon really shouldn't keep his money in his pockets. He's going to ..."

"No, Spencer," Ryan said. "If you do this again, we're done. If you don't tell me what's wrong, I'm leaving. You won't see me again."

Spencer took a step backwards. He stumbled over a pair of sneakers. He dropped the money. The bills fluttered to the floor. Ryan made a soft noise. He grabbed Spencer's wrist. His hands were cool. He was close enough that Spencer could see the his eyelashes, the cracks in his chapped lips. Ryan pressed a kiss to Spencer's collarbone, and pushed him back on the bed. Ryan laid on his side, Spencer on his back. Ryan's lips were inches from Spencer's ear. Spencer felt his wet warm breath.

"Tell me the truth now," Ryan said. "Just tell me."

Tears ran down Spencer's cheeks. He didn't want to cry. He hadn't done anything wrong. He hadn't really done anything wrong, but the knot of guilt in his stomach betrayed him. "I needed money," he said, just louder than a whisper. "I went out the other night and I made a bad bet, and I needed money."

Ryan said nothing.

"I fucked up," Spencer said. "I'm so fucked up." He was crying now, really. He'd never cried like this in front of Ryan before. "I've lost so much money. I've done such bad things."

Spencer rolled on his side so his back was to Ryan. Dripping tears tickled his nose. The blankets were rough against the raw wet skin of his cheek.

"I don't understand," said Ryan.

"I don't know," Spencer said. "I just ... sometimes I get so sick of it all, so sick of our fucking schedule and so sick of being responsible and dependent. It's like, when I'm making a bet or rolling dice, I can do whatever I want and no matter what happens, it's not my fault. It's just luck, or fate. I don't know."

Ryan said nothing. Spencer felt his presence in their echoed posture. This was what it would be then. He'd lost Ryan. In his stupidity, he'd lost him.

"How much?" Ryan asked.

"What?" Spencer said.

"How much money do you need?" Ryan asked.

Spencer sat up. Ryan looked tiny, curled on his side on Brendon's cluttered king size bed. His eyes were wet.

"Four thousand," he mumbled.

"What?" Ryan said.

Spencer swallowed against the lump in his throat. "Four thousand dollars," he said again.

Ryan sat up slowly. In his baggy pajamas he seemed insubstantial, bird-boned. He stood. Spencer hadn't noticed, but his feet were bare. He left, shutting the door behind him.

It was over. Spencer couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. He would go to the men he owed money and he would say he did not have it and he would let them beat him and he did not care how badly he hurt or how much he bled, because it did not matter. He wiped his eyes on the hem of his shirt but he couldn't stop crying. He sobbed into Brendon's pillow. The tears did nothing. He didn't feel better, but there was nothing else he was capable of.

The door opened. Spencer looked up. His nose ran. It was Ryan, again.

"Here," Ryan said. He held something out. Spencer took it. It was a check, folded in two. "Ryan," Spencer said. "No, you can't ..."

"Shut up," Ryan said. "You're taking it."

"I can't take your money," Spencer said, staring at the check.

"Take it," Ryan said. "I would have given it to you any time. All you had to do is ask."

"It's not your problem ..."

"You're my best friend," Ryan said. "You're the fucking love of my life. Anything I could possibly do for you, I would do."

"I don't deserve this," Spencer said. "I've done --"

"Spencer, you've done my homework, you dropped out of high school for me, your family practically adopted me. You've done more for me than anybody could or should possible do for a person." He was crying, too. He sat next to Spencer, side by side. "If it weren't for you I would probably be a crack whore or something."

Spencer couldn't help it. He laughed, weakly. "No," he said. "No. You were always destined for something special."

Ryan's smile wavered. He rested his head on Spencer's shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Spencer's waist. "Give them the money," he said. "Give them the money and I don't know, next time you need a rush we'll go fucking skydiving."

Spencer laughed. He curled into Ryan's embrace. "Okay," he said. "Okay. I'm sorry."

Ryan kissed his neck and the point of his jaw, and Spencer pressed his nose into Ryan's hair.

"I love you," he whispered. "I love you. I've always loved you."

Ryan smiled. "I know," he said.

\----

They got back to Vegas just in time for the funeral. Enterprise lost their reservation. Spencer fought loudly with the woman at the counter until she handed over the keys to a black Escalade. He'd wanted a Prius. Travelers stared. Ryan stood with his arms folded fifteen feet away, staring at the ground. They didn't turn the radio on. They did not speak. Traffic was not bad at eleven on a Wednesday morning.It was early enough in the year that it was still cool and the air was dry. Spencer's head felt clearer. He rolled down the window. They flew through the heart of town. Spencer was relieved they would not be late.

The service was in a small church twenty minutes from the cemetery. Spencer's mother met them outside. Ryan sat alone in a front pew. Few people came. Ryan's mother breezed in twenty minutes late, coughing as she stubbed her cigarette out on the floor. The remarks were entirely impersonal, delivered by a frail stooped old priest with mauve liver spots on his bald pate. The casket was closed. That was the only thing upon which Ryan had insisted. Someone had sent an arrangement with lilies. They reeked like Easter and Spencer's grandma. Spencer stifled several sneezes. It was over soon.

Ryan sat in the back seat on the way to the funeral. They hadn't rented a limo. Spencer forgot to turn the headlights on until they were halfway there. It felt wrong to follow a hearse. The procession was short and sad. Spencer's mom's minivan was covered in bumper stickers from his sisters' elementary school. She was proud five times over of her honor students. Spencer felt a headache coming on. He hadn't slept on the flight. The collar of his shirt chaffed his neck.

The cemetery was dry; burnt hills rolled towards the horizon, specked with white tombs. Palm trees lined the road. They rustled cheerily in the breeze. It sounded like rain, but the sky was the blue of dish detergent, deep. Ryan stood at the edge of the grave. He'd borrowed a black suit from Brendon, and it didn't fit quite right. It pulled at the shoulders. He wore Gucci sunglasses. Spencer wanted to go and take them off his face. It was awful. It was mostly awful. Spencer didn't cry. He wasn't sad that Ryan's dad was gone. He didn't feel anything at that absence. And Ryan was not crying, either. Spencer was surprised. He'd expected tears.

The casket was lowered slowly into the red earth. An old woman Spencer did not know let escape a croaking sob. Ryan picked up a handful of dirt and threw it on the coffin. Spencer's mom cried silently. He reached for her hand and squeezed tightly. That was all of it, then. There was no repast planned, but Spencer's mom was having a few people back to the house. She'd made tuna casserole. That was Ryan's favorite. Spencer wanted mostly to sleep, not to exchange pleasantries with Ryan's senile relatives. Ryan still lingered graveside, his hands jammed in his pockets. He looked at ease. Spencer couldn't not watch. His mother came up. He was taller than she was now. Spencer hadn't seen Ryan's mother since his sixteenth birthday. She'd come late to the party that day as well.

He couldn't hear what they said, not with the wind rattling the dry fronds of the palms, but he watched. Ryan was still and unreadable as a mannequin behind his black glasses. His mother wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. Spencer could see the black smudges from her mascara. Whatever they said did not take long. The exchange was brief. She hugged Ryan before she left. He stiffened in her embrace, pulling away. Vapor trails stitched the sky. What grass there was crackled underfoot. Ryan's dad had purchased a lot in this cemetery twelve years earlier. Ryan had gotten a call the day after he'd died informing him. Spencer didn't know how the cemetery people knew. They were like vultures, or gods of death. Ryan would have paid for something better. He could afford something a little less sepulchral than this place of dead grass and sun-bleached silk flowers.

"Hey," Spencer said.

"Hi," said Ryan, his tone supremely even.

"We're going to go," Spencer said, gently. "My mom invited everyone back to the house."

"Give me your keys then," Ryan said. "I'll drive myself back."

"Ry ..." Spencer said.

"What?" Ryan said, short.

"Are you going to be okay to drive?" he asked. He squinted.

"Of course I am," Ryan said. He slid off his sunglasses. "Spencer, I'm fine."

"You don't have to act like --"

Ryan cut him off. "I'm not acting like anything. I'm fine." He put a hand on Spencer's shoulder. "I'm fine. Really. I just need to breathe for a little bit." He smiled, not weakly. He seemed happy. Spencer couldn't understand it. Once Ryan had a guinea pig that had died and he'd spent two weeks writing lyric poetry in its honor. This was something different. Spencer was offering him a shoulder to cry on but Ryan's eyes were dry.

"Okay," Spencer said. He handed the keys over. Ryan grabbed them, jingled them, and stuffed them in his pocket. He smiled again, that bright easy smile that was so out of place. He hugged Spencer.

"I'll see you back at the house in a little while," he said. "We'll get Port of Subs for dinner."

Spencer laughed. He felt close to crying. Every instinct he had told him Ryan needed him to stay, but he couldn't.

He walked backward for a few yards, and then stumbled. Ryan laughed. Spencer waved. He turned and made for his mom's car. She'd already have changed into her Keds. Dress shoes made her feet hurt. She'd be ready to get home. Guests were on their way. Ryan had turned back to the grave. He stood so near the precipice. An earthmover sluggishly crawled over the terrain. They were coming to fill in the grave. Ryan would leave then. Spencer thought he would leave. The sun was setting behind him and it was bright and he was nothing more than a thin smudgy shape, but surprisingly solid, and, Spencer thought, not looking very pitiful, not looking very inconsolable, although he was alone.

\----

Spencer was the first to wake in the morning. It was still early; the sun hadn’t even risen all the way yet, but someone was wandering around outside Ryan’s door. He heard the water running in one of the bathrooms, he heard someone grinding coffee in the kitchen. He heard the low hum of the television in the living room. Any other morning, on any other day of his life, Spencer would have been irritated; he would have frowned and grumbled and wrapped a pillow around his head until he was deaf to the world. But nothing could have possibly bothered him that morning. On the contrary, he was happy to have been woken. Sleeping and dreaming kept him from seeing Ryan. Rather fortunately for him, Ryan was less than an inch away.

Ryan once slept through an entire flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, including the hour the flight went through such terrible turbulence it felt like they were crashing directly into several mountains consecutively. Brendon had clung to Spencer’s arm and made him hold his hand. Ryan acted like they were at a Holiday Inn. Whoever was grinding coffee in the kitchen was no match for Ryan Ross.

Spencer decided Ryan was beautiful, even though he had already decided that a hundred different times the night before; he just kept getting more beautiful, and Spencer kept falling more in love with him. A minute later, Ryan made a quiet little noise and frowned in his sleep. Spencer twined his fingers in Ryan’s hair and kissed him and the frown disappeared. Spencer smiled to himself and felt the urge to call every person he’d ever known and tell them he was now both allowed to do and capable of doing that.

From next door came the sound of squeaking hinges; Brendon had opened his door. "Jon!" he whispered loudly. Spencer rolled his eyes. They weren’t doing a very good job of trying to keep quiet. Jon didn’t answer, so Brendon’s footsteps padded down the hall to find him. Spencer could hear them talking, but they were just far enough away for their words to be garbled.

Spencer moved so that his ear was against the bare skin of Ryan’s chest, close enough to his heart to hear it. Ryan shifted in his sleep to hold tighter to Spencer. Spencer was too awake to sleep, even though now it was quiet, and fairly dark, and he had nothing to think about except finally being almost completely happy. He kept his eyes open and studied the pigmentation of Ryan’s skin, where there was no hair, where there were tiny almost invisible hairs, where there was dark hair. He had a mark of faded blue ink on his arm that had come from a night of furious writing. He had a stray eyelash on his cheek. Spencer blew it away for him.

Then Brendon and Jon came closer. Their words became intelligible again.

"Do you think he went to a doctor?" Jon asked. "He said he felt sick. He looked really sick."

"Maybe he ran away," Brendon offered. "Maybe he joined the circus."

"He wouldn’t have gone without telling Ryan," Jon said.

There was a knock on the door. Spencer reached to pull a blanket over them both, up to their waists, anyway, and then he shut his eyes just as Brendon barged in.

"Ryan," Brendon said loudly. "Spencer’s..." he stopped.

Jon was somewhere behind him. Spencer bit his tongue in his attempt to keep a still face. "Not missing anymore," Jon finished for him.

Brendon cleared his throat. "Let’s just back away slowly," he decided.

They did, except quickly. The door shut again. That, of all things, was the noise that finally got to Ryan. Spencer peered through his eyelashes at him when he began to stir.

"Hmm," Ryan said quietly, running an index finger along Spencer’s jaw and across his lips without opening his eyes. "Spencer Smith, is it still you?"

Spencer wound his fingers around Ryan’s. "No," he said.

Ryan smiled. "Please tell me it’s noon already."

"Not even close," Spencer said. "I think we should have an emergency band meeting this morning."

Ryan yawned. "What for?" He still hadn’t opened his eyes. Spencer took this as permission to kiss his eyelids.

"They kind of just walked in on us, is why," Spencer said.

Ryan was undeterred by this information, but the corner of his mouth quivered. "Can you imagine us walking in on them like this?"

That put a stop to everything Spencer was finding perfect and adorable. His face fell. "Oh, god," he said. The idea was revolting.

Ryan chuckled; a moment later it turned into a complete laugh.

"Oh, god," Spencer said again. He rubbed at his face, trying to expunge the mental image.

Ryan finally opened his eyes. When their gazes met, Ryan stopped laughing and Spencer stopped moving. "Oh, god," Spencer said again.

"You don’t think..." Ryan said, unable to finish his sentence.

"No!" Spencer exclaimed. "I don’t think!"

Ryan nearly started laughing again. He looked at the ceiling. "We should be very nice to them for the rest of our lives."

Spencer held up a pinkie finger; Ryan hooked with it one of his own.

A voice came booming from the hallway. It was Brendon. "Spencer and Ryan," he said loudly, enunciating every syllable. "Please wear clothes and vacate the bedroom."

"In a timely fashion," called Jon from farther away.

Ryan rolled his eyes and smiled.

"Please don’t forget the part about wearing clothes," Brendon reiterated.

Ryan looked at Spencer. "Should we oblige?" he asked.

Spencer took one of Ryan’s hands. "Wait a minute," he said. "I have to tell you something."

"I already know I was good," he teased.

"Well, that, but also..." he paused and Ryan laughed. "Also, I don’t really believe in magical cures, even if they are you."

Ryan waited, listening patiently.

"I mean," Spencer continued, "what if I’m not any better?"

"You aren’t broken," Ryan told him. "You weren’t yesterday, either, or six months ago, or fifteen years ago. You’re just you."

"But..." Spencer said. He frowned. He didn’t know how to tell Ryan all the worries in his heart. "What if I have too many problems for this?"

"For me?" Ryan asked, knowing what he meant. "It’s not like I went into this without knowing all about your baggage."

"What if the stress of the record or touring gets to me and I crack again? What if I steal everything from all three of you?"

"I’ll keep you too busy to gamble," Ryan said, and he smiled. "As soon as work is over, I’ll get you out of here and we’ll see every show and eat at every restaurant and dance at every club this city has in it. I won’t let go of you, I won’t let you out of my sight, and I won’t let you fall."

Spencer wasn’t completely comforted. Ryan’s words sounded like something a hysterical woman on a daytime talk show would say to her heroin addict abusive boyfriend who denied their children. Still, it wasn’t as if he had just met Ryan recently. Ryan had never let him fall before, not when he knew what he was holding Spencer back from. Spencer still needed time to get used to the idea that they both had exactly the same objective in life. Ryan wasn’t helpless. Spencer wasn’t indestructible. Everyone had known it all along, except for them, until then.

Ryan pulled him from bed and they dressed. Ryan tied his headband around Spencer’s head. They walked out nonchalantly. Jon and Brendon were waiting for them at the dining room table. Ryan sat down lightly and took a bite of Brendon’s toast.

"Good morning," Spencer said.

They were unreadable. Jon had a polite and apprehensive smile. Brendon just looked peculiar. He waited for Ryan or Spencer to say something. When neither of them offered anything, Brendon couldn’t wait any longer.

"Number one, the doors lock," he said.

Ryan smiled at him. "Not mine. It’s broken."

"Number two, then maybe you should have considered another room!" Brendon exclaimed, looking at Spencer.

"Well," Spencer said, "we started out in yours, if it’s any consolation."

Brendon looked sick. "It was you who cleaned all my shit up?"

"It was," Spencer answered. Ryan helped him put every single thing Brendon owned back into its rightful place. It took them nearly two hours.

"Then, number three, if cleaning my room is what puts sparks in your love life, you have the stupidest relationship in the history of the world."

"How sweet," Ryan said.

"Number four..." Jon said in warning, looking at Brendon sternly.

Brendon was resigned. "Number four," he said more gently, "we can’t say we’re surprised."

"Not even a little," Jon said.

"And we aren’t going to like, make you stop for the sake of the band, or anything," Brendon assured them.

Such a thing had never crossed either of their minds. They wouldn’t have allowed Brendon and Jon to even begin that argument, had they wanted to make it. Ryan rubbed his chin and laughed at the absurdity of the thought. Spencer high-fived him from across the table.

"Crisis averted," Ryan said.

"Number five, now that that’s all out," Brendon finished, "let’s go fucking work. I can’t get back to sleep now... or possibly ever again, and I feel inspired."

"I feel inspired, too," Ryan said.

Brendon looked at Jon for help. "I am going to be sick, make them stop."

Spencer grinned. "Brendon, you’ve wanted this to happen for years, stop pretending otherwise."

"You cannot make me admit shit, Spencer Smith," Brendon pointed at him while he stood, but he laughed, and the joke was up.

Brendon led them single file to the door. Ryan wrapped his arms around Spencer’s shoulders from behind when Brendon and Jon couldn’t see them. It was meant as a simple gesture, something to say, ‘I still love you and I’m still here,’ and he was going to drop his arms a moment later. Foiling the plan, Spencer caught one of Ryan’s hands first. He kissed Ryan’s finger, the one that had trailed over Spencer’s lips that morning; he kissed his ring finger as a promise; he kissed the tattoo on the inside of his wrist; and he kissed the back of his hand, just for good luck.


End file.
